Organizers hope Freeport's 6th annual Pride celebration can be a low-key safe space for LGBTQ+ people

Pittsburgh’s boisterous Pride parade may soak up a lot of attention, but Freeport Pride Stroll and Festival is a chance for LGBTQ+ people in the Alle-Kiski Valley to feel supported in their own community, organizers say.

“You don’t have to go to a big city to feel safe,” said Sidney Namey, one of many people putting the event together. “You can feel safe at home.”

Note the word “stroll.” It’s not a parade; there will be no floats. And the day isn’t meant to be a “protest,” explained Wendi Lincoln, another organizer.

She settled on “low-key” as the best descriptor for Freeport’s sixth annual Pride event, which starts at noon Sunday, June 22, with a gathering at the Hope Garden on Fifth Street. The stroll starts at 1 p.m. and lasts about 10 minutes.

Participants are encouraged to mingle afterward. For those who have worked up an appetite, several local businesses are donating food, including Lock 5 Tavern and Vivian’s Bakehouse.

Freeport-based Numa Yoga also will host a free 45-minute breathing, meditation and yoga session at 11 a.m. in Freeport Riverside Park as a prelude to the Pride celebration.

Just over 100 people turned out for last year’s stroll. Organizers are hopeful for as many — or more — participants this year.

It all started in 2020 with one openly gay local pizza shop owner: George Wolfe.

Wolfe, who died in 2023, is credited with much of the legwork to get the event going in 2020.

“We really owe the existence of the Pride stroll to him,” organizer Sam Crummie said. “We are going to make sure to honor him in the best way we can.”

One thing organizers repeatedly mentioned was the importance of the event for young people. Crummie, who grew up in Freeport and graduated from Freeport Area High School, recalled the hostile environment she faced, at times, as a queer person.

“When I was in school, we were getting bullied for doing a day of silence,” Crummie said, referring to an annual day of action against harassment of LGBTQ+ students. “My friends were getting called slurs in the hallway.”

The stroll, in contrast, creates “that safe queer space in Freeport,” Crummie said, “because a lot of us didn’t have that growing up.”

Pride events have taken on a particular weight as of late. The FBI logged 2,936 anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, up from 2,700 in 2022. And many human rights group have noted a rise in harmful rhetoric toward LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are transgender.

To Lincoln, the social and political climate “just proves the need for this kind of thing.”