Bill Meunier - PrideFest 2022
Bill Meunier - PrideFest 2022
For many, days later, the post-Pride weekend is still more afterglow than memory. Beginning on June 2, the party began with the opening of PrideFest at Henry Maier Festival Park and continued until the last dance at the PrideFest dance pavilion late on Saturday evening. It was PrideFest’s 25th festival held at the hallowed grounds as a member of World Festival’s Inc, Milwaukee’s official festival organization. Under the savvy direction of Milwaukee Pride president Wes Shaver, the return of the PrideFest delivered a diverse palette of entertainers, vendors and attendees. Even the Milwaukee Public Library was present to show its Pride. Of course, there were fireworks, too.
A more recent addition to the traditions of Pride weekend was the Ride with Pride motorcycle run that took place on Friday, June 3. Beginning at the House of Harley in Greenfield, LGBTQ motorcyclists and their allies roared through the city.
Then came the Pride Parade, the first since 2019, on Sunday, June 5. Its record-breaking number of 130 marching units and attendance by thousands of spectators attested to the vibrancy and common cause of the community and its allies. This year, the PrideFest schedule had left Sunday open so revelers wouldn’t have to choose between the attending the parade or another day at the festival.
And all of this under cooperative skies that offered perfect parade weather at 69 degrees and fine festival conditions in the days before, although, admittedly, a tad cooler by the lake.
Crowning Moment
For me, however, and, no doubt, for all those present, the weekend’s crowning moment took place at the official PrideFest Opening Ceremony on Friday evening. It was relatively quiet affair held on the festival’s main stage with a full slate of Milwaukee’s political and activist who’s who in attendance both on the stage and in the gallery of VIPS. In addition to those given by Milwaukee Pride president Wes Shaver, Mayor Cavalier Johnson, County Executive David Crowley and Alderwoman JoCasta Zamarripa offered remarks on the significance of the celebration for the entire Milwaukee community in its continued struggle for equality.
But before those speeches were made, Shaver invited veteran Milwaukee activist and founder of PrideFest Bill Meunier to the podium to speak. Meunier, who is also credited with bringing PrideFest to the Henry Maier Festival Park, described that critical moment in Milwaukee’s LGBTQ history. The move to what we now more popularly call the Summerfest grounds wasn’t a simple matter of coming up with the financial resources to pay the rent. It was, in fact, a complicated and arduous process that required a vote by members of the World Festival’s organization. Some, in fact, vehemently opposed letting PrideFest occupy the grounds. Meunier pointed out that then Mayor John Norquist was the lever that convinced the naysayers to support the move. Even in defeat, however, those opposed tried to make the event a failure by refusing to allow PrideFest to sell food and alcoholic beverages. Thanks in part to Meunier’s lobbying the powers that be, that stratagem failed as well.
Meanwhile, a quarter of a century later, upon receiving the invitation to the opening ceremony, Meunier decided to wear something appropriate for the occasion. While searching through his collection of PrideFest apparel and picking out a “Together in Pride” t-shirt from the 1991 Pride event, he came across, as he described it, his “most prized possession,” a section of the original ribbon from the official ribbon cutting ceremony that opened the first PrideFest held at Henry Maier Festival Park in 1996. Emblazoned with the festival’s motto “CARRYING THE TORCH PRIDEFEST ’96,” the pink, yard long ribbon fragment is symbolic of the strides made by Meunier and his fellow Milwaukee activists of the early post-Stonewall era.
In recognition of that history, holding the ribbon aloft, Meunier concluded his speech by presenting it to Shaver as current president of PrideFest. This act of “passing the torch,” Meunier hoped, would continue in the future with subsequent PrideFest leaders receiving the historic memento as an inspiration and as a reminder of the efforts of their predecessors. Following the surprise presentation Shaver spoke. Moved by Meunier’s unexpected gift, his voice cracked with emotion throughout his remarks. I imagine most in attendance reacted the same way. I did.
Certainly, the rigors of organizing a major Pride festival can distract one (and everyone) from the reason for its existence in the first place. I imagine most PrideFest attendees, too, as young as they are, have little clue why we celebrate Pride. Moments like Bill Meunier’s impromptu “passing the torch” remind us of the whole point of the exercise.
I suppose that was the point of all the years of struggle, to make Pride a natural state of our being. In fact, later that evening, sitting on the rocks at the edge of the grounds, a friend (a fellow boomer) and I watched the crowds of the rainbow arrayed, the furries, the families with kids in strollers, alternatives, and all manner of millennials as they promenaded by in their content. “We did this,” he said.
