Two St. George students go beyond Facebook, organize pride celebration today
 |
| Photo by Michael Dillman from June Utah Pride Festival in SLC |
Written by Marcos Camargo
We live in world where social media activism has replaced social activism. The former—sometimes termed ‘slacktivism’ because of the little effort required to participate—can be seen almost daily as people post thoughts on politics, human rights, and religion. This past week saw an explosion of social media chatter about the SCOTUS decision granting marriage equality to every person regardless of sexual orientation. Facebook almost immediately released a feature that allowed users to overlay their profile pictures with a translucent rainbow in celebration of the historic, nationwide legalization of gay marriage.
While that’s cool and all, what’s really cool is when two young people use social media to create an actual celebration, and that’s just what Sam and Makayla [last names withheld], two local high school students, did this week. These two young women said they saw all the Facebook banter about the ruling and decided to create the first gay pride celebration ever held in St. George. They didn’t anticipate what excitement their event would generate. After creating the Facebook event, news of it spread quickly.
“We posted the event on Sunday, and not even a day later—it wasn’t even 24 hours later—there were already 300 people invited,” said Sam. “It was huge, and we realized, ‘Wow! This is really big now. It worked!’”
The event even outgrew it’s original venue.
“It was originally scheduled to be in Vernon-Worthen Park,” said Makayla. “But [the city] has a Fourth of July thing they need to set up, so we had to move it to Bluff Street Park so we could have the celebration and not have to worry about the city setting up for the Fourth of July.”
The support for the event has grown so big it has outgrown its creators’ ability to supply all the food. Because of this, Sam and Makayla ask that attendees bring food and drink to share and if possible, popup tents to provide shade.
All are invited to wear their pride colors and join the celebration starting at 5 p.m. today, Friday, July 3, at Bluff Street Park located at 600 North Bluff St. Don’t just talk about it on Facebook. Come out and show your support.
