Queer Meet+Greet
One thing that we really wanted to hone in on with this committee, was making sure that we were providing something that the community wanted. And in order to do that, you have to ask the community what they want. So that's exactly what we did. We held a small meet and greet in St. Johns park, and invited the community to come out and meet us and our hometown hero, Martha Shelley, and, well, meet each other. Martha took the main stage (wich was under a humble shade tree) and gave an incredible speech about the history of how the LGBTQIA+ community has been treated, Stonewall, her involvement with the protest march afterwards, the set up of the Gay Liberation Front, and what she sees moving forward. Throughout the rest of the event, we had committee members mingling around, taking down notes from everyone who showed up, while asking them what they wanted to see for the community—what they wanted to see from us. In addition to that, we had some interactive stations that allowed people to leave written messages, mark on a map where they had come from, and I was roaming around, recording personal testimonies, asking people what they would tell their younger self, knowing everything they know now. It was a day full of emotion, excitement, new faces, new conversations, and the gathering of much needed knowledge.