Montrose Pride held its third annual Pride Festival on Saturday. The afternoon featured vendors from a variety of businesses and nonprofits, live music and entertainment, and an atmosphere of celebration and acceptance. The festival was held shortly after the Montrose City Council voted 3-2 to reject this year’s Pride Month Proclamation. June has been nationally recognized as Pride Month since 1999, when President Bill Clinton issued a presidential proclamation declaring it "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month" to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Montrose hosted its first pride festival in 2024, and city council read the proclamation that year and again in 2025.
One of the organizers said from the Montrose Amphitheater stage, “You guys, this has been a hard year for us because of what happened with the city. … They would not read the proclamation, but hey, screw them, we're still here. Thank you. And let's have a hell of a time!”
KVNF also caught up with Montrose Pride executive director Evelyn Greenman-Baird. They told us they were excited about how much the event has grown in the last three years, saying, “We get more people showing up, more diversity in vendors and performances. … It's getting bigger, we're bringing in more people.”
At the June 2 Montrose City Council meeting, Greenman-Baird and other Montrose residents addressed the council’s refusal to read this year’s pride proclamation. Greenman-Biard invited the council members who voted against the proclamation to attend pride, telling them, "Come and see what you're afraid of."
We asked them what the members would see if they showed up to Pride. Greenman-Baired told us, “I think that they would see a lot of people being their authentic selves, feeling safe, feeling comfortable to express themselves how they like around a community that they know inherently will support them. I think they'll see a lot of happiness, a lot of joy, a lot of great music, and really cool supportive people.”
Several churches were present at the event. A member of the Grand Junction American Evangelical Lutheran church told us, “We are here to represent that Christianity is not exclusively hostile to, well, all sorts of people, and we want to celebrate God's liberating love for all people everywhere, regardless of identity.”
Another attendee stated that celebrating Pride in Montrose was important, because “We're under attack. We're being made invisible. We are being told we're not good enough to exist. And it's seeping down into our schools, into our children, to the ittiest, bittiest ones, and we've got to keep pride, keep knowing that we are valuable and we do deserve everything. Gay rights are human rights.”
We also ran into Chad Jukes, a veteran who made a moving comment about the importance of being an ally to the LGBTQ community. He told us he was motivated to speak out because he feels that the members of Montrose City Council who voted against the proclamation “truly believe that their radical stance is representative of the vast majority of the city of Montrose, and they are dead wrong. Look around today, plenty of folks out here supporting Montrose Pride.”
One volunteer said that Montrose Pride is a celebration of coming out. When they attended last year, they were in the closet. This year, they’re attending pride as their true self.
