It’s Pride Month, Let’s Celebrate!

Why We Celebrate Pride Month in June and Why It’s So Colorful

Love, acceptance, and rainbow flags are in the air!

It’s Pride Month, and people are taking to the streets to celebrate the LGBT+ community and to raise awareness.

Every year, we parade in June to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York. On June 28, 1969, police raided a gay bar in Greenwich Village, called the Stonewall Inn. The raid sparked neighborhood riots that lasted for days after. New York’s gay community was fed up after years of enduring harassment from authorities.

The next year, our country had its first gay pride marches, and the gay rights movement began gaining momentum.

Spokane Pride Parade marchers carry a rainbow flag through downtown.

Spokane Pride Parade 2017

The History of the LGBT+ Flag

That bright-colored fabric you see swooshing above the marcher’s heads is the work of artist and activist Gilbert Baker. He created the LGBT+ pride flag for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1978.

While crafting it, he pondered the American flag with its stripes and stars, and the vertical tricolors of the French flag, and how both emerged from riot and revolution.

“I thought a gay nation should have a flag too, to proclaim its own idea of power,” Baker wrote.

The flag’s original design sported eight different-colored stripes. Today there are six, and each has a meaning: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony and purple for spirit.

On June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, those rainbow colors were projected onto the outside of the White House, New York’s Empire State Building, San Francisco’s City Hall, and Walt Disney World’s Cinderella Castle.

It was a major milestone for the LGBT+ movement, but there are other issues that the parade brings to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. These include violence against members of the LGBT community, homelessness, poverty, healthcare, and employment discrimination.

Spokane Pride Parade marchers walk with a rainbow-flag-carrying llama through downtown.

Spokane even has Pride llamas!

Pride in Spokane

Here in Washington state, we celebrated our legal recognition of same-sex marriage in December of 2012. Earlier this month, just a few miles from the BumbleBar factory, Spokane held its 26th annual Pride Parade. There was a bit of rain, but that just gave everyone an excuse to pull out their rainbow-striped umbrellas.

We’re only halfway through June, so if you have yet to celebrate or you want to party on, here are some sweet vegan rainbow recipes. I’ll take a rainbow pancake stack, please!

Delicious, Nutritious, Gluten Free, Ethically Sourced, Kid Approved, Vegan Approved, Energy, Sesame Snack Bars!
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