Just to be clear, Ellen Levett and Brian Longstreth don't deserve all the credit themselves.In fact, Levett and Longstreth understand that inclusive leadership — sharing the decisions, sharing the work, sharing the glory — was a key to their resounding success.
Levett and Longstreth co-chaired the all-volunteer committee that organized St. Petersburg's first major gay pride celebration in June. And if that sounds like a small achievement, just remember how Tampa's long-running pride celebration collapsed last year with its leaders not speaking to each other and under a mountain of debt. (For our in-depth report of that debacle, see http://www.weeklyplanet.com/2003-04-16/cover.html.)
In St. Petersburg, Longstreth said the pride committee expects to give about 15 percent of the $50,000 it raised to nearly a dozen community service organizations. In Tampa, such charity was the goal every year, but it never happened.
How did the St. Pete crowd do it?
By avoiding expensive big-name entertainment in favor of a more grass-roots style celebration. And by involving as many people as possible.
"Absolutely," said Levett. "That's what our goal was. We wanted to be truly inclusive. We didn't want to miss any segment of our community, and we have a pretty diverse community. Anybody we could reach out to, we did."
"We wanted to do something out in the open that was available to everybody, no matter their age, race, sexual orientation, religion, whatever," Longstreth said. "In talking to people, we kept hearing a common theme. People [in Tampa] missed the parade, the street festival and being outside. Celebrating our pride isn't in most cases about being behind closed doors or at a ticketed event."
With only a few months of planning, the 11-member steering committee organized a month's worth of events, many of them celebrating gay people's pride and participation in their chosen city. There was a downtown gallery walk and a religious gathering in Straub Park. The St. Petersburg Times opened its auditorium to show a landmark documentary film. There were food tastings, live game shows, waterfront picnics and a party hosted at a (usually straight) downtown saloon.
But our favorite event was the first leg of the St. Pete Pride Promenade, which started in a parking lot at Central Plaza. At first, the parade route was planned along major thoroughfares, until organizers realized they couldn't block the city's main post office that long. So instead, they ambled the route through the residential neighborhood of Historic Kenwood.
Presumably straight families watched and waved from their front porches and yards as a stream of young folks and old folks, men, women and children passed by on foot, on floats, in pickup trucks and antique cars. The differences among us didn't seem to matter: Everybody loves a parade.
"The whole neighborhood association was very supportive," Levett said. "That's one of the groups we reached out to, as I mentioned before. We could have just said, hey, we're putting a parade through your neighborhood, but we wanted to get them involved. We wanted to be inclusive of the entire city."
She continued: "It truly was St. Pete pride. We wanted to show off our city. We wanted to demonstrate that gay people are an integral part of the fabric of the city. We wanted to show that we're proud of the city, and that the city can be proud of us."
Levett, who moved to St. Petersburg from New York 10 years ago, was once a volunteer leader in that city's much larger gay pride celebrations. Not knowing any of the other St. Petersburg volunteers except the one who asked her to the first meeting, she was hesitant to join until she saw that she shared their goals: to create a celebration that was truly inclusive, something to be proud of, something that people could bring their children to.
Levett runs a business that tabulates survey data for marketing research firms. She has no idea how much time she gave to the pride committee, just that everyone was so busy and working under such tight deadlines that there was no time for "pettiness or side trips in pursuit of people's personal agendas."
Longstreth, a Realtor who has helped make central St. Petersburg a prime location for gay and lesbian home renovators, said more than 200 people helped plan the celebrations in one way or another.
"Nobody was paid," he said. "Lots of people put aside their jobs and careers for a
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.