In the spring of 2019, two Orcas friends saw a need and stepped up.
Maddie Olson and Laura Kussman — joined by a legion of dedicated volunteers — launched Orcas Pride to educate, celebrate and liberate the local LGBTQ+ community.
“I was at the Rock on the Rock performance of the Greatest Showman, in the front row, just weeping and watching ‘This is Us.” Seeing all of these people who are singing about embracing identity — I realized the island is already so drenched in pride. I texted Laura that night and said, ‘We are doing this.’” remembers Olson. “I was surprised because it feels like there would be a pride event here. When I started asking people, many said, ‘The Solstice parade is our pride!’ However, pride is a political protest for and by queer people, and the solstice parade is a celebration of the sun.”
The first gathering that June was an all-ages, all-day extravaganza in the Village Green with music, spoken word, face painting, dress-up, games and educational booths.
Organizers also sought the counsel of Out on Orcas, a group that held monthly potlucks for queer people for decades. As member Rachel Newcombe wrote in a guest column last year, “Out on Orcas passed the torch to the expanding younger generation. With this torch, they’re blazing the island with pride, fun, films, burlesque, activism, music, dancing and yes, fairy wings.”
Following the wildly successful inaugural festival, Orcas Pride — with the help of Jared Lovejoy — held a series of events at the Barnacle before the pandemic hit. Kussman and Olson persevered with well-attended virtual poetry readings and then reentered in-person celebrations with a cowboy discotheque in the fall of 2021.
“That first event and every subsequent pride have come together because the island is so supportive. Everyone believes in it,” Kussman said. “This has been a grassroots and self-actualized organization with no grant funding. It is all community supported.”
Pride in 2022 included day-time activities for kids and evening offerings for adults, a format that will be repeated this year.
On Friday, June 16, there will be a “Day Fest” from noon to four at the Grange with live music, a photo booth, haircuts, clothing swap, games, face painting, dancing, informational booths, a medical van and much more. That evening, the “Night Fest” begins at 7:30 p.m. with a drag show followed by a late-night dance party — also at the Orcas Grange. The drag show is now sold out so organizers have added a second, all ages show on Saturday, June 17. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7:30 p.m. Parking is on-site. Visit https://www.ticketsource.us/orcas-pride for tickets.
“It all started as a snowball that grew and grew into this beautiful giant glittery avalanche,” Olson laughed.
This year’s theme is “sharing gifts” and is centered around community, intersectionality and mutual aid. Intersectionality is the enmeshed nature of categorizations like race, class and gender that create overlapping systems of discrimination. Mutual aid is when people get together to meet one another’s needs with the understanding that the social systems available are not meeting those needs.
On June 6, the Human Rights Campaign — the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization — officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time in its more than 40-year history, following an “unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year.”
Fletcher Dae, the treasurer of Orcas Pride and one of its founding members, says that pride month is above all else about joy, celebration and visibility “in a world that obsessively seeks our eradication without actually trying to get to know us.”
“We are still here. We are thriving. We will always be here, and we were here long before colonization and reductive Puritan narratives,” Dae said. “Pride is also an invitation to dialogue. A lot of people who hate LGBTQ+ people have never actually done their due diligence to sit down with individuals on a human-to-human level, but we have spent countless hours in their congregations. They spend a lot of time on Twitter. A lot of media is simply outrage farming, in which emotions are co-opted in an empty argument about identity politics, through the lens of homophobia, and dressed up in the guise of populism. These same people genuinely believe we’re coming for their kids, or trying to create some rainbow totalitarian state, but that could not be further from the truth. What we want is for all kids, including trans kids, who are real and valid, to become thriving, healthy adults. We want trans people to have access to the same level of gender-affirming care that cis people have always benefited from. … We will continue standing up until the statistics no longer define our existence.”
Olson, who is a public school librarian, is moving off Orcas on June 25. They are planning to settle in San Francisco to pursue professional pride-related work. Olson feels confident that Orcas Pride will continue to thrive with such creative, dedicated volunteers. In addition to Dae, Kussman and Olson, other integral Orcas Pride members are Ari Dean, Adia Dolan, Pluto Dolohov, Libby Landauer, Skye Lee, Tam Lin, Noah Sheppard, Amie Stevens, Bailey Quishenberry and the Orcas High School Gay Straight Alliance.
“It’s kind of mindblowing how it builds itself,” Kussman said. “More than any other event I have produced, the community just wants to show up and provide.”
Dancers in the 2019 pride festival.
Organizers and participants at the 2019 pride festival. Back row, left to right: Max Saltzberg, Maddie Olson, Noah Sheppard, Nick Roberts, and Laura Kussman. Front row, left to right: Skye Lee, Adia Dolan and Melissa Schade.
