Oakland's Ready for Pride Parade, Festival

East Bay residents and those from other locales will be in Oakland to celebrate the annual Pride parade and festival Sunday, September 11.

The daylong event will be Oakland's seventh annual LGBTQ Pride festival and the third annual parade since the event returned in 2010.

This year's festival will have 60 contingents and floats, which is 18 more than last year, Pride officials said.

The East Bay Pride festival, as it was then called, began in 1997, but ended in 2003 after being displaced by the multi-day Art and Soul festival. A gathering with a few booths occurred in 2004 and 2005.

In 2010, Oakland LGBT leaders decided to start the festival again, with the goal to raise money for a community center (see story, page 1).

According to Carlos Uribe, Oakland Pride board co-chair, attendance has been growing over the years.

"Last year we had over 42,000 people, and we hope to grow that number up to 50,000 this year," he said.

This year, the festival will have four entertainment stages. The main stage will feature Canadian-born signer Deborah Cox. Her platinum selling debut album, Deborah Cox, earned her an American Music Award nomination. In 1996 she won the first of three Juno Awards for best R&B/soul recording. According to Oakland Pride, Cox received the Out Music Pillar Award in January 2015.

In 2007, she received the Civil Rights Award from the New York state Senate for her efforts in the fight for human rights and equality. She was recently honored by the Harvey Milk Foundation at its 2015 Diversity Honors for her efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the LGBTQ community.

Another main stage highlight will be Lisa Lisa, which with the Cult Jam was one of the most musically diverse and successful recording acts of the 1980s. With hits produced and written by Full Force, the group scored million-selling hits with dance-based tracks "I Wonder if I Take You Home," and "All Cried Out."

Today, Lisa Velez has resurfaced and Lisa Lisa is a solo act.

Other stages will also feature performances.

"We have a women's stage, which focuses on female-identified artists," Uribe said. "A community stage - which is exactly what it sounds like - it is a bunch of different local artists and folks in the community. In addition, we have a Latino stage for Latin artists that are popular in the LGBT Latino community."

Oakland Pride has long focused on making its festival family-friendly, reflecting the abundance of same-sex families in the East Bay. This year is no exception as Oakland Pride's traditional Family and Children's Garden will have a carnival and fun fair theme. The event will feature a "Jurassic Maze," and areas for families, toddlers, and older kids. The entrance is located on Franklin Street. Our Family Coalition is heading up the effort.

"We are one of the most family-friendly Pride festivals in the country, with a large area dedicated to children and family where we are having a petting zoo, face painting and rides," Uribe said.

Polly Pagenhart, family programs director at Our Family Coalition, said that most queer spaces are designed by adults with adults in mind, and are not places where one would take kids.

"Club culture is still a big part of the queer experience of being a gay adult," she said. "LGBT people, when they start to raise kids, are often faced we having to let go of queer community and culture in order to have an appropriately enriching experience for their kids."

Pagenhart believes that LGBT people get hetarosexualized when they have kids "by that I mean 'presumed to be heterosexual,' something that many of us don't anticipate as a part of our parenthood. But it is, given how relatively new queer parenthood is to most folks."

According to Pagenhart, LGBT parents live all around the Bay Area. Oakland Pride brings LGBT parents together and introduces kids to the rich gay culture.

"LGBT parents, they are still culturally queer," she said. "And it's important for our kids to see our rich deep culture that we are part of. It's also important for our kids to see that there are tons of other families like theirs."

Prior to the festival, the third annual Pride parade will take place. The parade was added to celebrate the fifth annual event and has returned the last couple years.

"We are relatively new organization," Uribe said. "The parade was added few years ago, because as we growing it was a great next step for our activities."

Jason Hall, vice president and regional compliance officer for Kaiser Permanente Northern California, said that Kaiser Permanente is a proud sponsor of this year's Oakland Pride celebration because Kaiser's history has been about inclusion and diversity from the very beginning.

"We celebrate diversity and invest in community health. We embrace equality because we believe it helps lead to a healthier, happier community," Hall said.

Oakland Pride is also sponsored by national corporations like Facebook and many local businesses like PG&E, the Golden State Warriors, Oakland A's, BART, and the Bay Area Reporter .

The Oakland Pride parade kicks off 10:30 a.m. at Broadway and 14th Street. The festival opens at 11 and ends at 7 p.m. The main entrance is located at Broadway and 20th Street. General admission to the festival is $10; children under 12 pay $5. For more information, go to http://www.oaklandpride.org/.