[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners. Today's episode includes an interview with members of the Pride Planning Committee. Make sure to check out the Queer Art Show at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford on 157 High Street this Thursday, June 9th from 6 to 9pm. You can find more information about Medford Pride by following Medford MA Pride on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also follow this link in today's show notes for a full schedule of events on the city's website. Hope you enjoy. All right, thank you all for joining me today. I'm here again with Chelly as my co-host. Hi, it's Chelly here. But if you all could introduce yourselves with your name, pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: Sure, so I'm cyan my pronouns are they them, I've been on binary identified since I was in my late teens. I moved to Boston around 2000 and the primary reason I moved to Boston was because I thought it was just a more queer friendly trans friendly place. and have lived in a number of different cities here, Somerville, Arlington. I moved to Medford in 2007. I was not excited about moving to Medford, I gotta say. I was a little apprehensive, but I was pleasantly surprised. I did not receive any, I did not really have any problems here. I've observed a couple racial things that I've seen, but I haven't seen any anti-LGBTQ issues. incidents, other than of course the Southern Baptist Church signs, which are whatever they're fine. And I was really interested to join the Medford pride planning committee because after spending two years in a pandemic and working from home, the entire time. Because I work in tech. I haven't had a lot of as much social interactions that was like, as I would like and I think you know that was just some way to make me feel engaged and hopefully make make Medford a better more welcoming place. I never found it to be extremely welcoming but I didn't find it to be hostile and for me that was like a good. being not queer hostile was actually very, was nice, you know, like for a place I have to live and I'm walking around carrying parasol and dressed flamboyantly or whatever. And I'll leave it at that.
[Joan Cyr]: So my name is Joan Cyr, I go by she, her. Been in Medford since 1999 and came by way of Malden and Cambridge, born and raised in Cambridge. So I think I came to the PRIDE committee because I was actually on the PRIDE planning Facebook group before it became the Medford PRIDE committee. And we were working with a small group trying to figure out what could we do for PRIDE this year. So since I had already been on that team, I threw my hat into the ring for the Medford PRIDE committee. I'm also a member of the Medford Community Preservation Committee. So I have a little bit of information about how to kind of work things through the city. And I was happy to see that Medford was going to try to throw their own pride committee plan after, you know, the Boston Pride sort of dissolved over the pandemic. So happy to be here. I think, Lucy, you're next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, I'm Lucy Rodriguez, and I go by she her. I joined the pride committee, because I thought that there should be things to do for people in younger generations. Um, so people who are younger have different interests and I thought it would be good to have someone representing them in the committee with similar interests, because it would be easier to relate to them. And I have identified as bisexual since fourth grade. And I've lived in Medford for my entire lifespan, so 14 years.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Hey there, so I'm Michael Lowe, they, them pronouns. Grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts. We've been living in Medford for about either six or seven years at this point. Here in Medford, I run a queer screen printing art collective called Triangle Manor. with nine other artists around New England. I also am on the board of directors for a nonprofit organization called Anthro New England, which is currently about a 3,000 person yearly convention in the anthropomorphic community. We raise a bunch of money for local charities. I got interested in the Medford Pride Committee I was actually recommended to me by somebody at the Unitarian Universalist group who thought that I might be a good fit and sent me the way of the, you know, the application. And I thought about it a bit and realized I would like to, you know, as a person of color, I would like to make sure that there is representation for, you know, black and brown people as much as possible. And, you know, as someone who is, also queer, I, I don't know, I just want to, I want to make sure that we are as open and welcoming as possible as a city. And, you know, having seen a good handful of local politics, I want to make sure that we as a community move towards inclusiveness in a way from kind of being comfortable and conservative. Yeah, and that's, that's it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you all. You jumped ahead a little bit to answer the why question about the pride committee. So I appreciate that. I do always ask the same question though, folks. So if anyone would like to answer their favorite place to eat in Medford and what they like to eat there, Joan, I know you're ready to go.
[Joan Cyr]: I'm ready to go. I actually my answer to almost every question I'm a Libra is it depends. So here's my list. It depends. If it's Asian, say bar. If it's a burger, snappy patties, pizza for pizza or real gusto, ice cream, Colleen's sandwich, Colleen's. They have the best BLT. If you haven't tried it, try it. Entree, semolinas, fish and chips, iris better than legals. Try it. Baked goods collects, of course.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's my list. Thank you. So comprehensive. And I appreciate that, the variety, because I think everybody has a hard time choosing one place. Anybody else want to share?
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: I would have to say I have two. Zamzam in Medford Square, astounding. I just had some lamb biryani for lunch, so very good. Also, Tenoch. They make amazing tortas. The torta campechana is always the one I go for. So yeah, those are my recommendations.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Anyone else? All right, so I know you haven't had a lot of time to plan the events for Pride. Last week, we had the flag raising and the drag show. And there was an interfaith service, I think, on the first. Great. So I want to give you some time to talk about what we can expect from the rest of the month, what you all are excited about.
[Joan Cyr]: Well, um, let's see next week we tried to plan to have at least one event every week during the month of June. So next week on the ninth, which is Thursday we have a queer art show at the UU church 6 to 9pm and transgender 101 that's being put on by the method public library at the library seven to nine. The following week on the 17th, there's an LGBTQ plus story hour hosted by Book Wonder at Four Good Vibes, that's at 11. And then a dance, skate, and mingle party at City Hall in the parking lot in front, 730 to 930. The following week on Tuesday, PrideZine workshop for teens at the Medford Public Library, 3 to 5. On the 24th, Friday Lindsay Monroe sings at the Medford public library that's for young kids at 330 and then the main event will be on Sunday, June 26 the celebration at Andrews field from one to six.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: Just to clarify, thank you, Joan, that was a perfect comprehensive list. So we do have, as she kind of mentioned, we do have events for both young children, middle-aged teens, middle-aged children, and we also have some all ages events. And as you mentioned before, we did have one 18 plus event, which was the drag. and dinner show because we wanted the drag queens to be able to express themselves, the drag performers to be able to express themselves as needed. So the two events for young children are the drag story hour, LGBTQ story hour, Friday the 17th, and the 24th, which is Lindsay Monroe sings, which John already mentioned. And the teen event is really the 18th, which is that dance party that we're having, 7.30 to 9.30. And then the other events, everything else we have is all ages. Oh, and the teen, there's also a teen zine thing at the library too. Sorry, forgot that.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. That's a, that's a whole bunch of stuff that you guys got, you all got together. Michael, I think you mentioned in your introduction this goal of like thinking about how Medford Pride could sort of separate itself or like distinguish itself from Boston Pride and sort of all the trouble there and the reason that we're not having a Boston Pride this year.
[Unidentified]: I wonder if any of you could speak to that a little bit.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: I will happily speak to it. Joan, were you going to say something?
[Joan Cyr]: No, I was waiting for Michael.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: Michael, did you want to start?
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, I would say, go ahead, Cyan, and I will jump on afterwards.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: OK, sure. So just to recap for people who don't understand, I had to research it and remember myself. So the Boston Pride planning commit, the Boston Pride organization, I forget exactly what they're called, they kind of imploded in 2020 because they had long been getting criticism for not including trans people in their leadership, not including people of color in their leadership. It was basically a bunch of, I think, white, gay, and lesbian folks, for the most part, who were leading the organization. And they also got criticism for too much corporate sponsorship. I noticed from going to the pride parades from 2001 to You know, 2018 or so that they changed a lot that many of the floats that came through were just a bunch of people in T shirts for whatever bank or corporation. And that was definitely less exciting pride parade. So what happened in 2020 as far as I understood it is that because of the resurgence of Black Lives Matter and the importance of racial equity. these calls for change became much stronger. And rather than change, they just decided to dissolve. I think probably COVID played a part too, because it was very difficult to manage during that time. So I don't know all the full details, but just to recap it quickly. So I think, you know, coming into this, because I have a very strong anti-racist interest and passion for diversity, I wanted to make sure that we were going to be inclusive of people of color, of trans people. And I think that's one way we want to differentiate ourselves and I also wanted us to be very careful about who you're accepting for sponsorship. We did talk about that a little as as maybe was mentioned before it was kind of a mad rush because we only had six weeks to plan so we didn't really have the time to do a lot of. But we did. I'm, I'm on the same page as what Michael said we didn't want. We didn't want a lot of Michael said this previously to me, we didn't want a lot of corporate floats and stuff like that we didn't want it to be a corporate event where we're primarily promoting corporations. I'm totally for promoting small businesses, to, to a small degree, like, you know, mentioning that they sponsored an event or so on. But I didn't want this to be an advertisement for big corporations for sure. So for me that was one that was, those were some of the ways and, and in our drag event that we had. we specifically made sure that we had drag performers of different kinds. We didn't have just white drag queens. We had drag kings, we had drag things. That's kind of what one of them calls themselves. I'm not saying that in a derogatory way, but we had people who were kind of gender non-binary in between drag performers, and we had drag queens, and we had people of different colors. And I think it was a great performance and pretty inclusive of how our performances went. So Michael, I'll hand it to you.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and so I guess specifically to talk about kind of. the corporate sponsorship end of things. I have a strong belief, and as Sayan said as well, I just don't want to see a big bank float. I don't want some financial firm to be hucking t-shirts at me at a parade, right? If they want to give us money and support our small community, great, but you're not getting representation because you're not queer. You're not, you know, you're not there to be seen right now, right? This is a month for the queer community, not for TD Bank or whomever. It's irrelevant who it is. In terms of small businesses, you know what? Yeah, that's who I want to be supporting our community. I would love a bunch of local restaurants, local businesses to be like, yep, you know, this pizza shop and that tax accounting firm in Medford, they've been here for 15 years. you know, they paid for this thing, they did that, and we recognize them and say, thank you. You know, that's what I want to, that's my view of a successful kind of sponsorship thing is, is small groups working with other small groups to, you know, make it happen, basically. So yeah, that's, that's all I got to say on that.
[Joan Cyr]: I guess we're not Boston Pride, we're Medford Pride.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Exactly. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And it sounds like there are a lot of great local businesses and small businesses that are involved in some of your events and the library sounds like has a big role. I think too, like what comes to mind when like not just like the advertisement for some of these corporations, but also what's how are they actually supporting queer people? Is it just like a performance for the month of June? Right. And I think also a criticism I could be totally wrong of Boston Pride was safety for BIPOC people. So like the presence of police and things like that, how that created less of a safe space for lots of people that needed to be included in PRIDE. And so yeah, I guess I wonder if that brings anything else to mind for you all.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wanted to also just add into what Michael said, and what we were saying in terms, this isn't something I had anything to do with but the leadership of the Medford pride planning committee has multiple people of color so it is not simply a matter of just a bunch of white people, even though Medford is probably almost 90% white. I think it's between 80 and 90 I'm not sure. We do have three people of color in our planning committee, and Frances is the one who picked the group. So France, in terms of your safety concern, that's something Frances has been pretty vocal about. And I know she's talked to the police a lot and she understands that for certain events, we may need to have a police presence because of blocking off roads and stuff like that. But she does want the people who are attending to feel safe and not feel intimidated. Michael, you might remember the term she used, I'm not sure, but she said she wanted to de-emphasize the police or somehow integrate them in a way that was less intimidating. Do you remember the term, or Joan?
[Joan Cyr]: I don't remember the term, but I won't forget the chief of police escorting Gigi Gill down the stairway from Medford City Hall to the flag raising, and in his regular street clothes, So that to me spoke volumes about how they are de-emphasized as a police force, but still there to celebrate.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: And for our listeners, Gigi Gill is a six foot five drag queen.
[Joan Cyr]: Without heels.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: And the police chief was not, I think the police chief was not in uniform for that either, right?
[Joan Cyr]: He was not in uniform, he was in street clothes, yes.
[Unidentified]: Lucy, did you want to add something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm saying you kind of already said this but not only do we have diversity in the community. I mean the committee, but we also look for diversity in our performers and people who are going to be there and businesses that are supporting the events, and we're very very like strict on protection wise because we don't want to risk anything bad, any of the events. So we've already covered safety for the most part, Francis has been on top of that the entire time. And I don't know, I am very excited for these events.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. Oh, I guess I'll give my two cents on on safety and police pride as well. I will say I was happy with I was comfortable with at least so far the presence of with, you know, with the chief of police escorting Gigi. I thought that was cute. That was nice. I am personally, as a, again, as a person of color, I am wildly uncomfortable around police officers. I strongly believe that police should not be at pride. I also, you know, I don't want to see a rainbow cruiser. It's not, you know, I don't think that's necessary personally. maybe a little bit more aggressive than others in the group, that's fine. That is just my view on it. So, so far, I like it. So far, it's, you know, I think we're doing a good job. So, yeah.
[Joan Cyr]: I'll say one thing about the corporations or police. The one side that I always think about is And I'm older than all of you here. But I remember a time when I worked in a corporation where it was not okay to be out. And I think that there's space for people that work at a company, for a city, for a store, whatever, to show that they can now be out and be proud about who they are in that corporate space. So I think that there's a little carve out there and to see, you know, a gay police officer or, you know, whatever that to me, I always think about the days that everybody was in the closet. So that's just my interpretation.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I, a hundred percent. I understand that. And I guess that's the thing too, is, you know, it isn't just as black and white as that. Obviously there are queer people in, you know, police and fire and everything, all the services like that. I think it's more of a, I would say it's more of a comment on the current tension, right, the current tension between the queer community between the, the black and brown community and and police in general I think is more of the comment, I guess I'm making then, in general. Yeah, because I'm not, I guess I'm not trying to be exclusive of queer folks in those groups. But just wanted to bring a point to, you know, a level of me as a non-white queer person having a certain way, having a certain feeling towards that group, even in a safe space. So, yeah.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: So I'll just add one thing. So everything everyone said is great. I love these perspectives. I just wanted to mention or just remind us that Pride originally was a fight with the police. So it started because the police in New York City were oppressing gay people kind of based on the pseudo legal thing where they were just going and harassing people at the bars. So I think, you know, In terms of pride and queer people, police presence is extra charged. And so I think that's just something to be sensitive about.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: So we said it a few times, you know, you all have had six weeks to plan, I'm assuming next time, you'll have more time, you'll start before April. But I think I'm wondering, like sort of how you hope the celebration, the parties, the sort of visibility of queer people in Medford this month, like how you hope that'll impact the city moving forward.
[Joan Cyr]: So right now, we're you know, six weeks into planning a celebration. So it's more about party planning right now, but we're all thinking, you know, in the future when the last event in the month of June occurs, how can we take the momentum of what was the pride committee and the discussions that we opened and the communications that we had and relationships that we built and how can we take that and parlay it into talking about the issues that still exist in the city of Medford around LGBTQ plus safety and Black Lives Matter and people of colors failing feeling safe, you know, what can we do to advance the conversations, how can we use Medford Pride and the momentum that we have to sort of advance those conversations, and, you know, maybe heal some wounds, improve some processes, and that kind of thing. We haven't gotten to that point yet, since we're so new, but that is something that we've grappled ourselves in our own pride planning committee meetings, you know, so.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: I can go next. I guess I would like to see a more geographically inclusive Pride next time when we have more time, where we actually cover I would like to see us have at least one event in West Medford you know events kind of all around the city, instead of just centered in this the city center. I mean the city center is great and I guess it's centrally located but i'd love to see more events kind of spanning out. And, of course, we would have more we would have more time, so we could really invest more time into researching sponsors and. making sure that the people who are supporting us are people that are, we would like to encourage them to be people who will support us will support the LGBTQ community in general, and not just for the pride events.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'll go. What I hope to see in the future is like Sayan said, I hope there is events spread out more instead of all congregated in the same region so that more people can attend and easily get there and it won't be such a hassle for people to attend these events so that it can be more friendly to people in the outer areas. Um, I also want to see more kids being proud have pride, because that's what the event is for. And I want them to kind of not be embarrassed because there's a lot of kids in school who are embarrassed to show their pride. And it's sad, so I hope that these events encourage them to be proud of who they are and to not be afraid to show it.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_04]: Again, echoing wider spread, geographically speaking, I would love that. I would love to in the non-Pride months, I would love to see businesses reaching out to the community or showing the community somehow that we support, it's a safe place. Does that mean they have a little flyer in the window with a Pride flag? Maybe it's as simple as that, who knows, but just something to continue the conversation and continue pushing That, you know, safe spaces are everywhere. And, you know, we don't have to be afraid to walk into a business because there's a particular political sticker in the window, you know, am I going to walk in and get accosted assaulted something, you know. So yeah, again, kind of echoing what john was saying is we're, we're still mid, you know, mid to the first time we're ever doing this. So we're kind of just taking notes and we'll get to it and hopefully tackle it and do something good with it after we're after we're done this month. So
[Joan Cyr]: One of the things that I recall that happened at a place I used to work at was when this question came up, and exactly to your point, Michael, you never knew whose office you were going to walk into and whether or not they were going to be friendly to you. And they created this You Are Welcome Here campaign. And they had little cards that everybody got to put outside their office, you know, and just to let people know that you were welcome here. And I thought it was a great way to walk around and feel like I am welcome here. I'm not just welcome in my own office, but I'm welcoming yours and I'm welcoming yours. And I think that's a great idea to do at the Medford businesses. So I'm taking notes.
[XXXXXX00075_SPEAKER_00]: I will just add a couple things. So I wanted to add on to what Michael said. I love the idea of having, and Joan, having these stickers that welcome. And on the contrary side, I would love these businesses to take down the stickers that I find kind of somewhat hostile and off-putting, like, for example, the thin blue line flags, which to me feels anti-Black. white supremacy, and I don't really feel super comfortable with that. So that might be another aspect of the campaign would be to get them to take it down. And I also wanted to mention, I went to trans pride event yesterday, which was by the trans emergency fund. And I would love to see us have one event where we're fundraising for some organization that's going to help people. And I would love to see something like trans emergency, fund doing an event with us because they are supporting trans people and often trans people of color. And because of the intersections of racism and anti-queerness, they're some of the most vulnerable people in this whole country. And I think that's something I think about a lot is trans people of color and how much they suffer under all the oppression of both patriarchy, anti-queerness and racism or white supremacy.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. It sounds like we're having a mini planning session right now. And not to undercut any of the, you're all doing amazing work. And it was really impressive to be at the events that have happened so far and it makes me excited for what's to come.
[Unidentified]: Anybody else, any other comments or anything else you want to make sure we mentioned before we wrap up? Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you all at some more of these events.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much to Sian, Joan, Lucy, and Michael, as well as the rest of the pride planning committee. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. And as always, if you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites!