Progressive Voices Come Out for Southern New Mexico Pride

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Contributing writer Stephen Jones checks in with more on-the-ground coverage from Southern New Mexico.

 Progressive voices were out in force for Southern New Mexico Pride, the annual LGBT community parade and pride festival held at Pioneer Women's Park in Las Cruces. The event drew over 2,000 in New Mexico's second largest city. The festival hosted one hundred supportive community, political, civic, religious, labor and local business organizations, who set up booths, displays and tables at the park site. The festival was preceded by a parade that made a long circuit through downtown Las Cruces. Several hundred participants marched in the parade, which kicked off Saturday's festival.

 Among the political leaders on hand for the event were Las Cruces Mayor Pro Tempore Sharon Thomas who read the City of Las Cruces LGBT Pride proclamation to open the festival. Other elected officials who attended the event were State Representative Joni Gutierrez, Doña Ana County Commissioners Scott Krahling and Billy Garrett, and Las Cruces City Councillor Miguel Silva.

Representative Gutierrez, the Doña Ana County Democratic Party, Doña Ana County Democratic Women, and Organizing for America organized booths for the event and entered contingents to march in the parade. Supporters of President Obama, Democratic U.S. Senate Candidates Hector Balderas and Martin Heinrich, and Michael Ray Huerta, an unannounced candidate for Mayor of Las Cruces, also participated at the event throughout the day. Many first-time voters were also registered during the day long event. 

A lone protester holding aloft an virulent anti-gay sign spent the day standing on a footstool holding his handwritten cardboard placard aloft. He was surrounded, however, by a phalanx of LGBT-positive activists carrying pro-LGBT civil rights signs. There were no incidents. At the close of the festival Carrie Hamblen of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) thanked the group for maintaining their cool, but noted that the ugly anti-gay sentiments expressed by the lone protester "show why we all need to keep participating in this festival."

Southern New Mexico Pride is one of many celebrations held annually in June of each year, which is designated as LGBT Pride Month and commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York, which is considered the first major event of the modern LGBT civil rights movement. Southern New Mexico Pride was sponsored by the New Mexico GLBTQ Centers, PFLAG, and the Las Cruces Convention and Visitors Bureau.

All photos by Stephen Jones. To see more posts by Stephen, visit our archive.