Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center
October is full of high holidays for the LGBTQ community. Aside from being LGBT History Month, October includes Halloween on October 31 (this year, it falls on a Saturday!), Intersex Awareness Day on Monday, Oct. 26, and National Coming Out Day, celebrated on Sunday, Oct. 11. The latter marks an important rite of passage among LGBTQ folks, the official recognition of one’s identity. For some, it can be a matter-of-fact moment with life going on unchanged; for others, it can be a dramatic one with nothing remaining the same thereafter.
Appropriately enough, National Coming Out Day is also the occasion for the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center’s annual Big Night Out Gala fundraising event, which will be held Friday, Oct. 9. Over the years, it has become a major source of the Center’s income. Last year’s event, held at Discovery World with 600 in attendance, raised $137,000, or 19% of 2019’s total revenue. However, like most traditionally public gatherings nowadays, the upcoming Big Night Out will be held virtually. With a theme of “Celebrate Our History,” the gala will be live streamed on Facebook and YouTube Live with a lineup of high-quality entertainment, educational videos and an online auction.
As always, the funds raised will be dedicated to the Center’s spectrum of services that include programs for seniors, youth, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, as well as food and clothing banks among others. Additionally, the Center’s planned move in 2021 will certainly be an additional financial cost for the upcoming fiscal year.
Long-awaited Move
Announced during the Center’s virtual annual meeting in late June, the long-awaited relocation is in the offing with the selection of the new locale projected for the end of the summer with sights set on March 2021 for the actual move. It will be the Center’s fourth move in its 22-year history. A virtual town hall meeting is to be held to garner community input on potential new locations.
The new site is intended to alleviate the current problems of low visibility, limited parking and poor bus line accessibility. The current location’s original footprint having been reduced by two-thirds a decade ago when the Center’s lease agreement underwent a major restructuring, there is also a dire need for more space. The move raises the inevitable questions: Where will the new LGBT Community Center be and what will it look like? Although details offered at the annual meeting were sparse, it appears that the new digs will be in a more affordable part of the city. One can speculate where that could be. Proximity to UW-Milwaukee and the LGBTQ populations downtown and on the Eastside would be accomplished by a Riverwest location. The Fifth Ward is still something of a Gayborhood, but its gentrification in recent years may put it beyond the financial constraints implied by the lower rent criterion.
As for its look, it has been suggested that a new concept could be implemented, namely that the future Center would consist of a central hub with satellite facilities in other locations.
Time will tell. Perhaps the gala event will offer the opportunity for an update.
Information about the LGBT Community Center’s Big Night Out Gala may be found at mkelgbt.org.
Paul Masterson is an LGBTQ activist and writer and has served on the boards of the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center, Milwaukee Pride, GAMMA and other organizations.
