PPL Thanks Staff, Partners for Successful Community Pride Picnic
To the Editor:
On behalf of Princeton Public Library, I want to thank our staff and partners for the unqualified success that was the Second Annual Princeton Community Pride Picnic.
Library staff worked with their counterparts at McCarter Theatre Centre, HiTOPS, the Princeton Civil Rights Commission, Princeton Human Services Department, YWCA Princeton, and the Princeton Family YMCA to plan the event. These partners were joined by the Arts Council of Princeton, Princeton High School GSA, Princeton Unified Middle School SAGA, I Support the Girls, Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice, CASA for Children, Corner House Behavioral Health, Inspired Threads, Planned Parenthood of Northern, Central and Southern NJ, Babs Siperstein PROUD Center, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, Nassau Presbyterian Church and PFLAG Princeton in creating a welcoming environment to celebrate Princeton’s LGBTQ community and its allies. I think everyone who participated, partner or attendee, would join us in thanking Princeton Shopping Center for its generous financial and logistical support of the Pride Picnic.
The result of these collaborations was an overwhelmingly positive event on a beautiful evening for celebrating difference and building community. Thank you to the estimated 1,500 people who turned out to demonstrate support for the LGBTQ community, making the evening truly special.
If you missed the Pride Picnic, the library welcomes you to march behind our Read With Pride banner in the Princeton Pride Parade on June 18. Please visit the events calendar on princetonlibrary.org for more information and to register. At the library, we know that while it is important to celebrate Pride Month with picnics and parades, the struggle for LGBTQ equality is ongoing. As such, we invite you to visit the Pride Resource Guide on our website to learn about the hard-won gains by activists in a community whose rights were denied, and very existence threatened, for centuries. Happy Pride, everyone.
Jennifer Podolsky
Executive Director, Princeton Public Library