Lift up our Pride!

Dear Pride Family,

Pride brings us together in times of protest, mourning, victory, and celebration. Pride helps connect us to community and our found family. Pride gives us access to life-saving direct services and provides grant funding to our local and global LGBTQ community. This work is made possible through the collective strength of our community in the face of oppression, discrimination, and violence. During the ongoing global HIV/AIDS pandemic, our resilience allows our movement to go on and grow even as the COVID-19 pandemic devastates the world.

In San Diego, we are privileged to have a community-led Pride organization that does meaningful education, organizing, advocacy, and philanthropic work all year long, not just one weekend a year. As a result, our programs continued on in virtual spaces as we adapted our services and reached more people than ever in our organization’s history.

As we move forward with cautious optimism that the COVID-19 pandemic is nearing its end, it is vital to remember that many of us still walk with one eye over our shoulder. The distance between our hand and the hand of the person we love can seem impossibly far when we walk in spaces where fear owns us more than love. The closets we carry on our backs while hiding within them at work, school, and at the dinner table can seem too heavy to bear. Our work is far from over.

That is why we still have Pride. That is why we are here. At Pride we all have a uniquely beautiful opportunity to lay down our differences and lift up our diversity. We cast aside the shackles of shame and unapologetically embrace the ability to be radically authentic to ourselves. Together we will continue to pursue justice with joy. It is each of you, who make that possible. Each of you keeps us resilient.

With Gratitude and Pride,

Fernando Zweifach López Jr

[pronouns: they/them/theirs]

Executive Director

San Diego Pride