Chicago Pride Parade Attendance

By Natasha Petrenko

Since June of 1970, Chicago hosts a very fun, colorful and meaningful parade every year. It is the Pride Parade. It is held in June because that is when a group of individuals who identified as part of the LGBT community fought against the harassment they faced by the police in New York on June 28, 1969.

This led to the Stonewall Riots. A year later, Chicago along with Los Angeles celebrated the anniversary of the fight for freedom for the LGBT members. The parade is hosted every year on the last weekend of June as a tradition that has gotten well known throughout the years.

Since the parade first came to Chicago the number of people attending has drastically grown. It has changed throughout the years when it first started it was more of a march to make a political statement. However, from 1985- 2014 there was tremendous growth in the number of attendees at Pride. The Pride Parade is still making a statement, however, the attendees go all out and have fun celebrating equality and pride in the LGBT community.

In 2013 Chicago’s Pride Parade attendance has reached 1 million and the same goes for 2014. There was a strong increase in those years because in November 2013 same-sex marriage was legalized in Illinois.

The parade is held in Boystown where Pride is celebrated the whole month of June. The parade is on the last Sunday so it is safe to say that it is a grand finale of the month-long celebration.