 Welcome back to in the studio at Davis Media Access. I am your host Madeline Homigucci and today we'll be talking about the 2018 Davis Pride Festival. Here to join me today is a very special guest, Gloria Partida. She is the co-founder of the Phoenix Coalition, right? Is it the Davis Phoenix Coalition? So we'll talk about that a little later too I think, but let's jump right into it. Can you tell me what is the Davis Pride Festival? So the Davis Pride Festival is a festival of inclusion. We like to tout it as it's family-friendly and it is to raise awareness around issues that are faced by our LGBT community and like all cultural festivals it's sort of an opportunity to provide the community a way to engage with a different community that you would not normally engage with in kind of an open natural safe space. Right. And so one of my favorite stories from last year's Pride Festival was a friend of mine said that their neighbor had gone to the pride Davis Pride Festival and came back and said I think I was at the Pride Festival I'm not really sure and it really made me laugh because I can imagine what this person thought when they were going to this Pride Festival and what sort of image they had in their mind and got there and realized that it's just normal people. It's your neighbors, it's your cousins, it's your co-workers, it's just like the rest of the community and really that is what cultural festivals are about. It's about meeting a different culture that you as I said would probably not interact with on a regular basis and so we are really excited to put it on every year. Yeah and it looks like how many years have you done this by the way? This is our fourth year. Wow. That's great. Yes and the first year that we put it on we were really nervous about whether or not anybody would come actually come out and we had a modest crowd and the second year it really kind of took off and so we're hoping that it continues to grow and our theme this year is unique like you because we find that our festival is unique. It's different than the San Francisco Festival, it's different than the Sacramento Festival. It is it's sort of like Davis. Davis tends to be it tends to be unique. I mean Davis likes to think you know our community likes to think of itself as being a little different than it you know the the communities around it and our festival reflects that. So we tend to be a very it's a picnic-like atmosphere. We have music that is very diverse. It kind of covers a lot of different genres and we have a huge focus on youth at our festival and the reason for that is because my son grew up in Davis. He you know started school in second grade here, graduated Davis high. He came out when he was 13 and at that time there was nowhere for him to get support. So the LGBT Center on campus is very good and they've got great resources but he didn't fit there and he didn't go off to college after he graduated and so he really felt like he didn't fit there and he couldn't drive himself to Sacramento and there was P-flag in Woodland at that time but any of those choices required my participation and as anybody who has teenagers or who has been a teenager knows that you don't want your parent to participate when you're trying to find yourself. So it was it was really it was a great opportunity for us to provide that support for young people. Recently we started an LGBT youth group and we make sure that there's an entire section that is staffed by the GSA's at the junior high and the high school. The you know greatest part about that is that they get to design that space so they decide you know what the booths are going to be like they pick out like last year we had the huge hamster balls for you know for the people to participate in and very specific involvement to yes for for the youths and to get something that fits right what they like their age group right that's great and I mean I have no idea what youth enjoy these days and so it's really helpful to have them kind of on the ground floor of planning that space in that area and for youth by youth of the particular subculture yes yes so it's it it's it's really special and so the the Davis Phoenix Coalition has a number of things that they support so we have rainbow families which is parents who get together once a month and they address issues around you know raising gender fluid children or they get support if they are LGBT families who who are raising you know typical children and and they do a great job of advocating for issues in the schools and for just supporting themselves and so they they come out because we have a teen area and we have a kids area and so the families come out and and you know just let people know that they're there and their support working through the different stages of finding their identity right right and and like I said we just started the LGBT youth group and we partnered with the city of Davis the city of Davis has been very supportive for us they you know help us out with the space with Central Park they and they have Parks and Rec has partnered with the Phoenix Coalition and the LGBT Center on campus so between the three of us we've created this support group which is really really great because the LGBT Center on campus comes in with curriculum and so they'll be they'll be doing a lot of work around safe relationships and so they have like one night where they meet and it's just kind of a social and then they have one night where they meet and it's more informative and educational and we are you know planning to have a couple of sessions where you know parents can come in and and get some information oh yeah and how to interact with with their kids at this time and right and if they have questions about you know any any questions really yeah that they may have so so that's that's what the festival really supports it supports raising awareness around as I said all of all of the all of the issues that the LGBT community may have so we have Sacramento HIV mobile testing unit comes out and does free HIV testing for us and we're super excited this year because we have we think the music is going to be really great it looks fantastic I'm so excited for this concert yes I'm a huge music fan and so I've always wanted to for music to be a focus of the festival and like I said it's one of the things that people can really gather around and really feel like they're on common ground around music and so we really try to push that we we partnered this year with the Davis Live Music Collective they they do music fest yeah they do the the music festival every summer and so they have selected four acts for us and we're excited about that and we have Thea Austin who's going to come and perform and she's bringing Dave Hernandez who is a former American Idol and and we just secured Effie Pacero who is on this current American Idol and she's a powerhouse singer she's fabulous and so we we're just we're just really really excited again we're really excited about the music the other part of the festival is the run for equality and that is something that is particularly special to our family because the Davis Phoenix Coalition was founded five years ago because my son was the victim of a very violent hate crime and it the community really came out and supported him and we were really grateful for that and out of that I had a number of people who said you know what can we do and so we formed the Davis Phoenix Coalition to to prevent intolerance in the community and so we work with the police department for instance on better relationships we support the anti-bullying efforts of the school we put on the Davis Pride Festival as I said we've formed these groups we do forums we do um you know movies and uh just try to engage the community around inclusion and but anyway when this when this incident happened with my son uh he's a long distance runner so he ran cross country in high school um he's run like half marathons he just he runs all the time it's what he does so after the incident he couldn't walk he and it was unclear about how much recovery he would be able to do so the very first um pride festival rather than having a parade because most pride festivals have a parade uh we had to run and because he was able to run you know he was it took about a year but he was back to running wow and so that's an excellent recovery yes yes and so it's like I said it's special to us it it it sort of signifies the the resilience that that people have that people can come back and people can um be strong after whatever incident that that you know happens in your life and uh last year it was really sad because we had a group that came out uh that were running for a teen in I think it was Solano County uh who had committed suicide uh because they were they were gender fluid and um and they had run the previous year in our festival and and then couldn't run that year because they had committed suicide and so this very large group came out in support of of that young person and so we're just we're happy to uh to be able to use to use this as as a way to to show um solidarity and you know to show like a whole community just running together it's it's really it's it's really great and and like I said it means a whole lot to us so this year we have three distances we have a 10k a 5k we have a 1k because we have a lot of people that said we really love to support you but we're just not runners and we can't go that far so so we have the 1k and we have a rainbow dash so uh for for young children to run uh a block or so and we're really hoping that people will sign their kids up it's five dollars for the rainbow dash and we've only got one little rainbow dasher right now so we're hoping that we get more people that come out and actually you know uh run with this really cute yes yes uh so I don't know if there's other yeah the information you'd like to I think so I think um one thing is that it sounds like this festival is made to be accessible and you know truly uh you know with with with physically and through you know open hearts open minds I think uh uh something that students are often worried about since we are connected so closely with that community of students at UC Davis is uh uh cost you know and and how much how much is this gonna cost because I think people do want to be involved but I think this festival is free is that right the festival is free um it's not free to us so we're really uh we're really hoping that we get sponsors we're looking for sponsors in the community we're looking for volunteers the run in particular takes a lot of volunteers um and and sorry that that does that costs some some amount to be involved in the race right like uh 20 20 35 25 it's $40 for the five and the 10k it's $20 for the 1k and as I said I think it's $5 for the rainbow dash okay but that's that sounds that sounds very doable yes and and it sounds like uh um you're expecting a big turnout on that day and I think on that day in particular sounds like we're we're running out of time a little bit but I do want to get out to the viewers uh that it that that day is May 20th May 20th the run starts at 8 a.m and the festival starts at 10 a.m with all the festivities booths uh you can visit Davis as well as as you know learn more about this culture you know and and uh it's at community park as well so it's very central or sorry sorry central park central park right yes sorry yes I think I think it's 401c street great well well thank you so much I'm sorry we don't have more time yeah but I really enjoyed talking to you about this if you want to learn more go to davispride.org or uh find out more on facebook okay great see you next time