“A person can be a hero at any point in their life, whether they are working toward equal rights or just coming out.”
The observation comes from Dr. David Baker-Hargrove, president of the Metropolitan Business Association and senior executive producer of that organization’s annual Come Out With Pride (COWP), now one of the largest Pride celebrations in the Southeast. And it sums up the theme for this year’s event, which is expected to attract as many as 50,000 to Lake Eola Park on Sunday, Oct. 11. In its fifth year, COWP will honor LGBT heroes, local and national, and past, present and future.
“I think that this year’s hero theme really connects us all to each other,” Baker-Hargrove says.
In fact, for more than a week prior to COWP, different events will spotlight acts of courage and leadership. It starts with the 20th Headdress Ball on Oct. 3, which annually raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Hope and Help Center, a local HIV/AIDS support organization. After that, a calendar full of parties, screenings, exhibits and events lead up to the Sunday parade, expo and show. They include: an opening ball, a Studio 54-themed dance party, a military circuit party, an Olympian pool party and a Fantasy Island soiree.
There will be a special downtown screening of Milk, and Harvey Milk’s impressive gay nephew, Stuart Milk, will attend several events throughout COWP weekend. The Parliament House is bringing in RuPaul for a concert, and just about every local club is promising something special for the weekend.
The festivities culminate in COWP’s main event on Sunday. Tens of thousands will gather at Lake Eola Park for entertainment and an all-day expo attracting more than 100 vendors. At 3 p.m. the parade will step off at the corner of Robinson St. and Summerlin Ave., and then wind its way to Central Blvd. past the lake to Rosalind Ave., where the biggest crowds will be gathered in front of the Walt Disney Amphitheatre. Expect an enthusiastic reception for Grand Marshall Stuart Milk.
Milk will address a huge expected crowd after the parade, and he’ll be followed by a “Heroes Entertainment Spectacular” featuring a variety of local acts and speakers. Openly gay national recording artist Ari Gold will close the show at 6:30 p.m., but he’ll be followed by DJ B inviting attendees onto the amphitheatre stage for a dance party until 9 p.m.
Orlando has an up-and-down history when it comes to Pride events. Brave groundbreakers first marched around Lake Eola back in the 1980s, when Orlando was a far less accepting place. Pride parades attracted as many as 15,000 in the mid-1990s, but organizational and logistical problems plagued subsequent events.
In 2005, the Metropolitan Business Association (MBA) got involved and moved the event from June to a more temperate October date that coincides with National Coming Out Day. No longer overshadowed by Gay Days in early June, the inagural COWP attracted 8000 to a downtown parade that spilled into Heritage Park.
Attendance doubled in 2006, and the following year MBA made the critical decision to locus the event around downtown Orlando’s beautiful showpiece, Lake Eola Park. Attendance has since grown exponentially, to last year’s estimated 45,000. Just about everyone agrees that organizers have found the right formula, and continue to make the right decisions.
“There is really no sense that we have to top the year before,” Baker-Hargrove says. “We simply try to maintain and improve the level of service and entertainment, building on the model from the past.”
Politics often provides the drama. Last year’s COWP focused attention on the (successful) Amendment 2 ban on marriage equality, the upcoming presidential election, and local and national hate crimes. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer spoke forcefully about equality, trumpeting recently enacted partner benefits for city. Actor Jeffrey Wright stumped for Barack Obama. And the parents of local murder victim Ryan Skipper advocated for hate crimes legislation.
Since being elected president, Obama has promised to sign the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill, named after the young man brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyo. on Oct. 12, 1998. An updated version of the play based on that murder—The Laramie Project—will be read at the Walt Disney Amphitheatre on the anniversary of the murder, the day after COWP.
Another fallen hero will be present throughout COWP weekend, at least in spirit. Harvey Milk was murdered in 1978 after serving just 11 months as San Francisco’s first openly gay city commissioner. In that time, he influenced thousands throughout the nation to come out and live life openly, honestly, unafraid and unashamed.
Stuart Milk accepted the Presidential Medal of Honor for his uncle at the White House in August 2009. In his own right a dynamic speaker and respected advocate for LGBT and workplace equality, many expect Stuart Milk’s post-parade comments to be a highlight of COWP weekend.
And for those seeking additional inspiration, COWP has worked with the Central Florida GLBT History Project to create an exhibit honoring local heroes who have made a difference. For the third year in a row, and with the assistance of Darden Restaurants, the History Project will display local GLBT history in a tent at Sunday’s COWP celebration.
Hundreds of volunteers oversee almost all of Come Out With Pride. According to Baker-Hargrove, planning takes all year—and a fierce devotion to the event and its meaning.
“There is an inordinate amount of work done by a lot of dedicated people,” he says. “They are absolutely committed to providing many of our activities at no cost to the community.”
They are heroes, possibly encouraged by attendance at previous Come Out With Prides.
