Pride Week 2022 kicked off on March 28 with a theme of solidarity.

Clare Lemke, the director of the University of Utah’s LGBT Resource Center, said she was happy most of the events were held in person this year.

“Last year, Pride Week was almost exclusively virtual, which was great and still connected a lot of people to community outlets they wouldn’t have normally had,” she said. “But [this year] there was just a special kind of excitement around being able to hold community space in person.”

Pride Week was celebrated with a variety of activities and events throughout the week: Queer Prom, Pride Paint Nite and a Religious Solidarity Panel, to name a few. 

A keynote speech was given by Raquel Willis, an activist and writer dedicated to Black transgender liberation, on March 29. The speech explored solidarity and its meaning for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I always have to give it up to a lot of our Black trans ancestors, ‘transestors’ as I like to call them,” Willis said. “Because many of them provide models of solidarity.” 

In her speech, Willis credited many historic Black transgender individuals such as Marsha P. Johnson for laying a blueprint of solidarity that many people still follow today. 

“I think it’s always important for us to remember that we’re not the first ones building these modalities of how to come together [and] how to build mutual aid — we have a rich history to lean back on,” she said. 

Throughout the speech, Willis reflected on how solidarity affects her work and how different pieces of her story have shaped her identity.

“I want to urge y’all to start figuring out those pieces of your story that can be points of connection with other folks,” she said. “Stories are organizing tools, that is the fuel of my work. I think [they] can also be connective tissue for how we start to understand the ways we can impact other folks and maybe the ways that they can also impact us, because we all need a little transformation.”

Solidarity and Safety for the LGBTQ+ Community at the U

Pride Week this year came shortly after the overruling of Gov. Cox’s veto on H.B. 11, which bans transgender girls from competing in female school sports.

“Anytime that there are bills happening locally or nationally that target LGBTQIA+ people, we definitely see that affecting student populations,” Lemke said. “What [the LGBT resource center] is here to do is to support students. We are here if students are struggling, if they’re feeling overwhelmed, if they’re feeling hopeless in the face of different things that are happening politically. We’re here to help connect them with community [and] to help connect them to resources so people don’t feel like they have to navigate those feelings by themselves.”

Vice President of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Mary Ann Villarreal, said in a video about solidarity that solidarity is key and people need to know they are not alone.

“What I’d like for people to know is that we are in a landscape right now where the psychological harm is in the everyday for our young people,” Villarreal said. “We’re seeing greater rates of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and of suicide. And if whatever one’s politic is, we have a responsibility to care for our young people and the responsibility to ensure that they have every opportunity to thrive and grow here at the University of Utah and wherever they call home.”

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