PRIDE
Toronto to Host First In-Person Global Black Pride
Third annual event will be held in a hybrid format after back-to-back virtual gatherings
BY HEATHER CASSELL
The third annual edition
of a Pride event celebrating
Black queer people
around the world online
will be presented in a hybrid
format in Toronto in 2022, giving
folks an opportunity to participate
in the festivities in person for the
fi rst time.
After the fi rst two years were entirely
virtual, Global Black Pride
organizers hope the millions of online
viewers who attended in the
past will come to the weekend-long
in-person and virtual event slated
for July 28-31, 2022. Global Black
Pride is spearheading the event
with support from a Toronto-based
organization called Blackness Yes!
as well as Pride Toronto, which
produces the annual Pride festivities
in the city.
The annual event highlights
Black queerness and the Black
LGBTQ community’s past and future
contributions to the LGBTQ
movement.
The hybrid in-person and virtual
Black Pride event will feature a
human rights conference, resources,
workshops, performances, a
festival, and a parade. It will also
spotlight Toronto’s queer Black
community’s history and vibrance,
according to a press release.
“We are a global community of
vibrant, strong people, and we
need to celebrate that,” Global
Black Pride Vice President Rikki
Nathanson, a Zimbabwean transgender
woman asylee who lives
in Washington, DC, told Gay City
News. “Celebrate our diversity, our
culture, our fabulosity.
“It was really important for us to
meet in person more as a celebration,
not only of our culture and
our diversity but also to celebrate
our Blackness and our unity … as
Black global citizens,” Nathanson
added.
The event’s organizers see it as a
commemoration of injustices committed
against queer Black people
and their struggles.
Blackness Yes! programmer
Craig Dominic told Gay City News
Phyll Opoku-Guimah is serving as the director of Global Black Pride’s human rights conference.
he was thrilled that Toronto and
Blackness Yes!, which produces
Toronto Black Pride and Blockobana,
was selected as the fi rst city
and organization to host the live
Global Black Pride event.
Toronto Black Pride coincides
with Caribana and Canada’s
Emancipation Day in July/August
and ends with the daylong celebration,
Blockobana.
“Black Pride is a political act
whether we’re protesting or dancing,”
said Dominic, a 42-year-old
gay Black man who is looking forward
to working with the Global
Black Pride team to produce the
event.
Dominic said that Blockobana
will be the “perfect closing party.”
Blackness Yes! has created safe
spaces for “African, Black and Caribbean
LGBTQ2S folk in Toronto,”
for nearly a quarter-century.
The organization produces events
that celebrate and uplift Canada’s
Black LGBTQ community and provides
services to the community
throughout the year.
In 2022, Toronto Black Pride will
celebrate its fi fth anniversary and
Blockobana will celebrate its 10th
anniversary.
Global Black Pride was founded
in 2020 amidst the global racial
reckoning and the pandemic when
many Pride events either went on
hiatus or went virtual. It started as
an initiative sponsored by Global
Black Gay Men Connect. Grindr
For Equality, the nonprofi t arm of
the gay social network and dating
app, backed the fi rst two Pride
events , according to Global Black
Pride’s co-founder and president
Micheal Ighodaro, and in-kind donations
were provided. The organization
has not set up a budget to
date for its 2022 event.
The Black Pride organization is
no longer associated with Global
Black Gay Men Connect, Gerald
Garth, Global Black Pride’s head
of events, media, and communications,
told Gay City News.
The fi rst two annual Global
Black Pride events — themed
“First-Ever Global Black Pride is
a Riot” in 2020 and “What About
Us?” in 2021 — were hosted virtually
GLOBAL BLACK PRIDE
across the globe. An estimated
seven million viewers and 10 million
viewers, respectively, tuned
into the 11-hour events featuring
performances and workshops from
each continent, according to the
release.
Longing to be seen
and celebrated
Ighodaro, a 34-year-old gay
Black Nigerian individual who has
called New York home for a decade,
told Gay City News that there was
a need for an event like Global
Black Pride.
Black queer people needed to
see themselves refl ected, he said.
Events like the Black Pride event
fulfi ll a need for people to see others
like themselves without feeling
“othered” or “tokenized.”
“Many of us fi nd ourselves othered
in both LGBTQ and Black
communities,” Dominic said about
the importance of Black Pride.
Ighodaro said he felt that Black
queer people are usually only given
➤ GLOBAL BLACK PRIDE, continued on p.7
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