Wellesley’s Simon Glassenberg attended Saturday’s Boston Pride for the People parade and shared the following summary and photos:
On Saturday, the first-ever Boston Pride for the People parade and festival took place in Back Bay. The parade began around 11 am, and wound through downtown Boston, ultimately ending at Boston Common where the festival took place for several more hours until a brief rain storm sent many partiers indoors or home.
Last year, there was no official Boston Pride parade, after the collapse of the organization Boston Pride. The non-profit stepped aside from running the annual event, which it had been in charge of for the past 50 years. They released a statement this April explaining the decision. Despite the lack of an official downtown event last year, there were still many smaller events such as Waltham Pride and the Transgender Resistance March downtown.
Boston Pride for the People is the new group behind this year’s festivities. The group describes itself as “a volunteer-led organization that plans activities and events that celebrate the rich diversity, culture, and intersectionality of the LGBTQ+ community.”
On the list of groups in the parade published before the event, no Wellesley groups appeared, although there were certainly Wellesley residents among those parading and celebrating. During our hour and a half watching from the streets near Boston Common, we did not see any Wellesley-focused groups, either, although there were several groups from neighboring towns including Newton North and Park School in Brookline.
