Milwaukee PrideFest 2022
A vendor booth at Milwaukee's PrideFest in 2022
Over the last few decades, the official announcement of the PrideFest entertainment line-up has become the Milwaukee LGBTQ+ community’s rite of spring. It is the culmination of a year’s planning, negotiating, scheduling and booking dozens of stage acts. It is certainly a challenging enterprise given the diversity of the community’s demographics and its varied tastes.
In full disclosure, I was a member of PrideFest’s board of directors and production crew for a decade beginning in 2006. I vividly recall the conversations around the choice of headliners and, in particular, how to pay for them. Coincidently, back then, that discussion considered the community’s input that ever increasingly demanded not only LGBTQ friendly, but LGBTQ identified entertainers. One notable request was Ricky Martin, who, having achieved his fame and fortune, had just come out in 2010. His fee at the time was $250,000, more than PrideFest’s entire entertainment budget (today, he charges up to $1.3 million for a public concert). There was also a growing demand for more local talent.
The result is the 2026 legacy programming. It is intentional in its representation of 30 years of Milwaukee’s PrideFest history. Still, while overwhelmingly well-received and packed with all LGBTQ talent including many local and regional artists, not everyone loved this year’s lineup. What once would have been snarky gossip at the end of a bar punctuated by eye rolls and violent slamming of a cup of dice, the complaints were now quite public and amplified thanks to social media. Someone pined away for the good ol’ days when Cindy Lauper (in 2009) and Chaka Khan (in 2007) graced the stage. Yes, those were the days before the massive hike in fees. Today those name acts cost around the $200k mark. Even Milwaukee’s famous son, drag diva Trixie Mattel, earns $75,000-$150,000 for a “speaking engagement” according to her agent.
Chorus of Malcontents
Meanwhile, the yellow press joined the chorus of malcontents. An online magazine hit piece, its sources coyly unnamed (although easily recognized), targeted PrideFest and its President and CEO Wes Shaver. Full of misrepresentations, it was a tiresome read, to be honest. Bitterness loves company, it seems. But for all the petty jealousy and bullying, the message delivered, especially just weeks before PrideFest and in these times of renewed government incited attacks on LGBTQ+ people (and those of color, and women and immigrants), its attempt to fracture our community and throw a pall over the joy of PrideFest ultimately failed. No doubt PrideFest’s 30th anniversary on the lakefront will set record attendance, perhaps reaching 50,000 or more.
Of course, entertainment is but one aspect of PrideFest. Beyond the half dozen stages, it is Milwaukee’s only LGBTQ+ gathering with a full spectrum of community representation and participation. It includes the arts, culture, history, health care, athletics, social and family-oriented organizations. In fact, Vivent Health, the Milwaukee based national leader in HIV care, is cosponsoring this year’s festival. Coincidently, the partnership comes as PrideFest celebrates its 30th anniversary at Henry Meier Festival Park and Vivent Health its 40th as a health care provider. Kroger Corporation is again underwriting PrideFest’s food drive in support of Vivent Health’s food bank.
PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) will again be at PrideFest’s main gate to welcome festival attendees who have just braved the gauntlet of anti-Pride protesters. I recall the years when Nazi stormtroopers in brown shirts and crazed Christian zealots harassed us with ugly epithets. Today they are MAGA, but PFLAG will be there regardless.
Common Cause
Ultimately, that solidarity and common cause are why we celebrate Pride. Bill Meunier, a father of our Pride movement and the man who brought PrideFest to the Henry Meier Festival Grounds three decades ago, published a statement in 1998. The editor of Wisconsin Light, our community newspaper at the time, wrote an editorial reflecting on the ongoing LGBTQ struggle and the true meaning of Pride Month. “It is because of who we were,” he wrote, “Hidden, frightened. ‘Homosexual,’ not gay. Yet, a precious few found ways to break through the fear and shame risking everything at Stonewall and in countless other places. They won a measure of dignity and freedom.” About those who struggled in the past and their impact on who we are today, he added, “they are part of us.”
Ironically and sadly, his words are today as valid as they were nearly three decades ago. “Growing stronger every day still under attack but standing unafraid, we continue the struggle for equality. Accepting no limit on our civil rights, we are moving forward to who we will be. We know that day is coming when the marches are over and we are fully equal. We are rejoicing in that knowledge. Behind the glorious stripes of our rainbow flags, we march united with those who came before and for those who will come after. For each of us knows in our hearts and in our souls that it is for these reasons and for the reasons that cannot be expressed because they must be felt, that we celebrate Pride.”
Forward in Pride!
