St. Pete Pride took heat for accepting sponsorships from polluters and weapons manufacturers, and for having indirect ties to federal immigration enforcement. This year, amid increasing hurdles imposed by the Florida legislature, local queer leaders critical of the organization told The Sapphic Sun that St. Pete Pride isn’t changing its tune yet.
St. Pete Pride did not return the Sapphic Sun’s request for comment as of this publication.
When The Sapphic Sun first reported on the protests of St. Pete Pride in 2025, organizers with the People’s Pride Coalition said that the group was going against Pride’s roots as an act of progressive rebellion against oppression. This was evidenced, they said, by the organization’s partnership with the St. Pete Police Department, which had (and still
has) an active 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some of St. Pete Pride’s 2025 sponsors also seemed to conflict with the progressive message of the earliest Pride celebrations. One was Jabil, a St. Pete-based tech company that manufactures weapons, collaborating with companies like iRobot to produce remotely-operated war robots. Jabil has also been heavily investing in controversial AI data centers over the last few years, including a recent nearly billion-dollar acquisition of a company dedicated to providing electrical services to the centers. Critics of data centers say that the massive buildings can take the place of ecologically important land, exhaust local water resources, use huge amounts of electricity and drive up surrounding utility rates.
Another was Gilead, a pharmaceutical company that has paid out settlements for undisclosed side effects of its HIV treatment medications. This year, Doctors Without Borders publicly accused Gilead of refusing to sell the organization a highly-effective HIV prevention drug it relies on to curb the global spread of the virus. Local phosphate mining company Mosaic—which has dumped millions of gallons of contaminated water into area
waterways—was not listed as a sponsor last year, but did have a group in the parade. This reporter attended the parade and heard the Mosaic group get booed by a few attendees.
Despite all of its funding sources, Tampa Bay 28 reported that St. Pete Pride was still $200k short of its fundraising goals just two weeks from the beginning of June this year. St. Pete Pride said this was partially due to $150,000 in lost funding from corporate sponsors and government funding that have run dry in the anti-DEI climate.
Tamara Leigh is a community powerhouse who founded the national queer Black magazine, Blaque/OUT. She also leads Tampa Bay Black Lesbians. In previous years, TBBL has collaborated with St. Pete Pride for their annual “Get Nude” events celebrating queer Black women and other nonwhite LGBTQ+ community members. Leigh started this event, as well as St. Pete Pride’s “Shades” event which celebrates Juneteenth. This year, according to a Facebook post by Leigh, TBBL was not contacted by St. Pete Pride at all to indicate that they would be terminating the collaboration with the group.
“Pride saves lives but if the loss of funding causes the ONLY TWO Black Pride events to be on the chopping block while others have been maintained and added- we have a WHOLE other problem. Unacceptable and incredibly disappointing. Walk AND chew gum,” Leigh’s Facebook post reads.
She later edited the post to acknowledge that Shades will still take place, according to St. Pete Pride’s website. The Sapphic Sun found that the link to RSVP for Shades currently does not work, leading only to a link to sponsor the event as a donor, and there’s very little advertising of the event on social media.
The Sapphic Sun spoke with People’s Pride Coalition organizer V last year when covering
the many accusations community organizations have made against St. Pete Pride. This year, V said, St. Pete Pride has not responded to many requests to meet with PPC. V said that they ran into Executive Director Bior Guigni at an awards event, and Guigni indicated that she would meet with the group. She didn’t respond to later emails, V said.
Lauren Harris-Taylor is a founding member of Queer Expression St. Pete, which provides programming and a physical community center for all age groups in the LGBTQ+ community. This year, QE will host its second annual RISE (Resistance, Intersectionality, Solidarity, Expression). RISE is a “cop-free, corp-free” month of almost-daily Pride programming, like a conversation about Miccosukee culture and the everglades with Two-Spirit Reverend
Houston R. Cypress.
“A parade that has cops with rainbow cop cars is very jarring when you’re looking at our history and the history of Pride,” Harris-Taylor told The Sapphic Sun. “(We are) trying to move our community back towards the kind of collectivism and radicalness that Pride is supposed to stand for, and that its origins are tied to, rather than something that’s
just supporting banks and cops.”
St. Pete Pride often justifies its existence to the city by touting multi-million-dollar tourism boosts to the surrounding economy. But Harris-Taylor points out that tourism dollars are historically complicated for Florida’s communities. Tourism is a primary driver of gentrification from northern transplants, according to Harris-Taylor.
“Positioning pride as a tourist attraction rather than a moment of reflective togetherness for our community…is already completely straying from the point,” they told The Sapphic Sun.
RISE’s theme this year is queer ecology, and how queerness ties into the natural world. Harris-Taylor also noted that the tourism industry results in many abuses of the local
environment, like tourists getting too close to gators and litter covering area beaches.
Harris-Taylor invites anyone who is excited about the party aspect of Pride to attend some of RISE’s more celebratory events, like the Gender Freaks mixer or the trans pool party. They also encourage attendance of the teach-in they will host with People’s Pride Coalition highlighting the history of Pride and how it went from police riot to corporate parade.
Unlike St. Pete Pride, RISE isn’t threatened by grants and corporate sponsors pulling funding, because they never had that funding in the first place. Their only business sponsors are small local businesses like lesbian-owned Tombolo Books, and the rest of their funding comes from small, local donors. This model allows them to weather periods where LGBTQ+ causes aren’t attracting as much money from mainstream funders.
A full layout of RISE events can be found on QE’s Instagram page @queerexpressionstpete
Other alternative programming to St. Pete Pride has emerged across the bay. Dyke Nite St. Pete is hosting several parties, including a collaboration with Dyke Nite Orlando and Sawmill for a weekend of clothing-optional camping.
Despite St. Pete Pride dropping support for the event, Tampa Bay Black Lesbians are hosting “Get Nude V.” The event will be themed after juke joints, where Black Southerners gathered to drink and dance in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It will be held at Black-owned Venue 2106 in Tampa.
St. Pete Pride’s Juneteenth event does not have a distinct theme. It will be held at the Morean Center for Clay, named for its foremost donor, Beth Morean. She is the daughter of Bill Morean, co-founder of Jabil.
People’s Pride Coalition will host their second annual People’s Pride event on June 26 at Allendale UMC from 6–10 p.m.
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This article appears in May 07 – 13, 2026.
