Minnesota Pride

Many comment that seeing the Pride flag hanging proudly from the Community Center’s façade is a welcome sight. I myself often look up at it and smile as I walk toward the building in the morning.

If you look up today, you may notice a perhaps unfamiliar flag. Same stripes of the Pride flag, but this one with a dark blue ground and an eight-point star to one side.

It’s the Minnesota Pride flag.

It hangs there because we support the people of Minneapolis, who find their welcoming, peaceful city turned upside down and under siege. It hangs to remind us that, if it happened there, it could happen here. It hangs to remind us and the world that Renee Good was a member of our larger LGBTQ+ community and we will not allow the truth of who she was to be erased.

Finally, it reminds us that peaceful protest is not only a right, it is deeply American. More than that, is an essential part of our collective DNA as LGBTQ+ people. The rights we have today are ours in no small part because the many who dared protest and demand more. Activism and protest are alive in this moment and remain a core part of our identity as a community today.

Next time you’re walking down Wall Street or coming into the Community Center, look up. Let the flag be a symbol of our solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Let that flag remind you of the collective power we have to push back against who seek to put us back in closet. Let Minnesota Pride fortify you as we face the challenge of this critical moment for our community and our world.