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Hudson Valley Pride March & Festival return to New Paltz

by Frances Marion Platt
June 6, 2022
in Community
0
A local drag artist channelled a fierce Lady Gaga carrying a brick from the Hutton Brickyards at New Paltz Pride last Sunday. (Photos by Lauren Thomas)

“You can’t sink a rainbow” is a beloved activist slogan that dates back to 1985, in the wake of the bombing by the French secret service of the environmental group Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior as it prepared to monitor nuclear tests in French Polynesia. The boat’s name was originally inspired by a book propounding a “Native American prophecy” that turned out to be bogus, about different tribes uniting to save the Earth. But it also has roots in the term Rainbow Coalition, coined by Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969 to describe his multicultural antiracism movement and adopted by Jesse Jackson for his 1984 presidential campaign.

In the decades since, the concept of the rainbow as a broad symbol for intersectional coalition-building on the left has morphed and tightened, becoming more recognizably the calling card of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Despite some societal and legislative victories, such as the national legalization of same-sex marriages, that constituency is feeling particularly beleaguered of late, with a conservative Supreme Court majority poised to take away their legal protections as soon as it’s done eviscerating Roe v. Wade. Maybe it’s time for “You can’t sink a rainbow” to get revived.

A mom and her young children dance to the beat of the band last Sunday at the Pride celebration in New Paltz’s Hasbrouck Park.

At last Saturday’s Hudson Valley Pride March and Festival in New Paltz – the first to go live since 2019 – rainbow gear was in evidence wherever one looked. Clad in rainbow socks and seated on the stone wall (symbolically meaningful during Pride Month) in front of One Epic Place, diagonally opposite the (probably unintentionally) rainbow-striped marquee of the Sunoco station, this HV1 correspondent noted the following items sported by marchers as they streamed down Main Street: rainbow flags, dresses, caps, cloaks, leis, fans, parasols, scarves, neckties, kites and even canine apparel. That’s not counting the vendor with a pushcart full of fanciful items that included rainbow-colored hats in the shape of googly-eyed squid.

Times may be challenging for LGBTQ folks, but there’s no denying the spirit of festivity and buoyant defiance that characterizes this annual event. Not one but two brass bands set the sprightly pace for the parade: a small ensemble accompanying grand marshal Bill Coleman – famed music producer/manager, deejay and founder of Peace Bisquit Productions – as he vigorously waved a multi-rainbowed flag from the sunroof of the lead vehicle; and the larger Rosendale Improvement Association Brass Band & Social Club, further back in the line of march. The turnout was lighter than usual, after the two-year hiatus, but the mood was upbeat.

The Hudson Valley activist band the Tin Horn Uprising provided a spirited accompaniment to the marchers in last Sunday’s Pride Parade in New Paltz.

The marchers were young and old, black, white, brown and yellow, able-bodied and wheelchair-bound. Dignitaries and candidates for public office including Pat Ryan, Juan Figueroa and Jen Metzger waved happily to spectators lining the sidewalks. A posse of kids from the Human Rights Club, Diversity Club and Band at Rondout Valley High School handed out hand-lettered informational cards explaining gay rights movement basics such as the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. There was even a middle-aged woman with PRIDE printed across her otherwise-bare bosom, crying out, “Join me! No more tyranny of the boobs!”

At the end of its traditional route from the New Paltz Middle School, down Main and across Plattekill Avenue – passing the Peace Park where former mayor Jason West conducted same-sex marriages that shook New York State back in 2004 – the parade entered Hasbrouck Park, converging with a larger crowd for the Pride Festival. Music performances outnumbered speeches this year, as attendees socialized without masks and circulated around the many tables set up by vendors, churches, arts, environmental and health-related organizations and social service agencies. The Hudson Valley Misfits were there in their “Skate, Don’t Hate” roller derby tee-shirts, and Habitat for Humanity put up an elaborate display of raffle prizes and stick-built structures.

Members of the Mid-Hudson Misfits roller derby team made a strong showing at the New Paltz Pride parade last Sunday.

Many tablers had free swag to offer – you could follow the soap bubbles in the air to find the bubble wands being handed out by a coalition of three inclusive local churches – along with various hands-on activities for kids. Arguably the coolest of the latter was the New Paltz Youth Program’s Smashing Negativity exercise: a table where you could write the things you want to eliminate from your life, such as “hatred” and “bigotry,” with markers on a blank white ceramic tile. Behind the table, a tarp was spread on the ground with a trashcan behind it. Once your tile was suitably adorned, you could don protective goggles, pick up a hammer and smash that tile to bits. Truly a cathartic experience! NPYP volunteers were on hand to sweep up the resulting mess of shards.

As always, New Paltz’s Pride Festival was a lesson in how to transform a lifetime’s worth of oppression and rage into creativity and joy. And above the crowd, as if custom-designed for the occasion, a rainbow-colored double halo formed around the sun – reminding us all to keep looking up, even in the darkest of times.

Pastor Tobias Anderson of the Redeemer Lutheran Church in the Pride parade in New Paltz last Sunday afternoon.
A group of seniors from Woodland Pond were quick to make friends when they came down to watch the Pride parade in New Paltz last Sunday afternoon.
A local activist bares her breasts for Pride in New Paltz.
Producer, manager, DJ, label and LGBTQ activist Bill Coleman was this year’s grand marshall in the annual New Paltz Pride parade.
This pooch and his friends were excited to be a part of New Paltz’s annual Pride Parade last Sunday.
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Frances Marion Platt

Frances Marion Platt has been a feature writer (and copyeditor) for Ulster Publishing since 1994, under both her own name and the nom de plume Zhemyna Jurate. Her reporting beats include Gardiner and Rosendale, the arts and a bit of local history. In 2011 she took up Syd M’s mantle as film reviewer for Alm@nac Weekly, and she hopes to return to doing more of that as HV1 recovers from the shock of COVID-19. A Queens native, Platt moved to New Paltz in 1971 to earn a BA in English and minor in Linguistics at SUNY. Her first writing/editing gig was with the Ulster County Artist magazine. In the 1980s she was assistant editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly for five years, attended Heartwood Owner/Builder School, designed and built a timberframe house in Gardiner. Her son Evan Pallor was born in 1995. Alternating with her journalism career, she spent many years doing development work – mainly grantwriting – for a variety of not-for-profit organizations, including six years at Scenic Hudson. She currently lives in Kingston.

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