First in-person Pride Parade brings out community to celebrate

After the pandemic postponed more than two years of June Pride festivities, this month, people are uniting to celebrate in person once again.

The Seattle Pride Parade kicked off on Sunday for the first time since 2019. This year’s theme is “family reunion.”

While earlier in the month, a community clean-up was organized at Capitol Hill in an effort to connect with the others to clean the streets and sidewalks of the residential district.

Despite the many events held to bring the community together, some instances of pride flags being torn down in the city have been reported.

Flags were torn down and then set on fire during an incident at Taqueria Cantina restaurant in downtown Seattle on June 15.

Pride flags torn down and burned in front of Seattle restaurant

“This is a way to try to pick on a whole community, but all this does is just brings us back together even stronger. You take something away, we’re gonna come back tenfold, and that’s what it is,” Gee said on the Gee and Ursula Show.

Having relatives and loved ones going through their own self-discovery journeys, the acts of aggression last weekend when 75 Pride flags were brought down from the streets of downtown hit close to home for Spike O’Neill.

Theft of Burien’s Pride flags prompts police investigation

“This is a harpoon through my heart, and I wish I could come at this with logic and reason and compassion and empathy … but I can’t when it comes to something that’s close to my heart,” O’Neill told Gee.

“When you take it to the point of you got the right to impose your beliefs and your wishes and your fears on the rest of society, I’ve got no time for you.”

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