Pride is celebrated in the month of June, as this was the month when the Stonewall riots took place. The Stonewall Riots marked the beginning of the modern-day Gay Rights movement, now known as Pride. The movement started on the 29th of June in 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a New York City spot, frequented by the marginalized community. A year later, the first Pride parade was held in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, making the stonewall riots fundamental in the movement towards gay rights for a lot of people in America and around the world.
Pride is a celebration of people coming together in love and friendship, to show how far LGBTQ+ rights have come, and how in some places there’s still work to be done.
Celebrating Pride
Celebrating Pride goes beyond giving employees the opportunity to celebrate their own and their colleagues’ sexuality, and the difficulties they may have overcome to feel able to publicly voice their sexuality. It is a call for the world to acknowledge that love is love, regardless of whom the love is directed to. It is about acceptance, equality and raising awareness of issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community. Pride also calls for people to remember how damaging homophobia was and still can be.
Pride is all about being proud of who you are no matter who you love!
To celebrate Pride, it is important to be an ally to the community. This can be demonstrated through furthering your education, having conversations, reflecting on your own bias and importantly, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and their businesses.
At Jarvis, we engaged in a series of events over June to celebrate Pride!
This started with a ‘rainbow’ office day, where our team came into the office in bright colours! Secondly, a virtual webinar was delivered by our wonderful founder of the Jarvis Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Prince.
During the webinar, Prince discussed the history of events that led to Pride month and what it means to be in the LGBTQIA+ community. The webinar then went onto touch where Pride is currently celebrated and what areas of the world are yet to get involved within the Pride month celebrations. Following this, members of our Jarvis family spoke about what Pride means to them. Finally, Prince provided some wonderful actionable suggestions that we can all take to become an ally for the LGBTQIA+ community.
These included using the correct pronouns, respecting how language is evolving and by always be open to learning new things.
