Clothes? Live music? Free mom hugs? Find it all at Trans Pride Long Beach
As trans rights fell under attack in recent years, so did the need for the community to create its own pride celebration in Long Beach.
When Angel Marcias started going to candlelight vigils for trans people who’d been killed, they knew they had to do something.
“I just remember the sadness that I felt because there were a lot of members of the trans community that were being murdered at the hands of the people who supposedly loved them and wanted a relationship with them,” Macias said.
In 2020, Marcias and Alexa Castanon, who’d first invited Marcias to the vigils, started planning the event that would become Trans Pride Long Beach.
While Long Beach has hosted its own Pride parade for the past four decades, Castanon and Macias saw a need to promote and uplift the trans community in Long Beach, with hate crimes against the trans community becoming a growing issue over the past few years across the United States.
“We need people to know that we’re here, we’re serious, that we care and we’re going to speak out and advocate,” said Macias, founder of California Families in Focus, a primary sponsor of Trans Pride Long Beach. “What if we do an event that’s just for the trans and nonbinary community? So we came up with Trans Pride.”
The annual Trans Pride Long Beach festival is returning to Long Beach for a fourth year on Saturday, Sept. 28 and is free for all who wish to attend.
The event, which will be held at Bixby Park, will host a number of performers, from transgender hip-hop recording artist Nekeith to gender-inclusive groups like the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles.
Though it was delayed a year by the pandemic, the city’s very first Trans Pride celebration kicked off on Sept. 18, 2021.
Socks Whitmore, the marketing coordinator for the event, spoke on the need to highlight the genderqueer community.
“It’s not a problem unique to Long Beach that sometimes Pride events don’t actually feel trans-inclusive, they host the whole alphabet and the full rainbow… but sometimes it can be nice to have a space that really is trans-forward and trans-centered, which Long Beach didn’t have previously,” Whitmore said.
Macias’ aspirations for the event are big. She hopes that the event can continue to grow, not to help trans people for just one day, but to protect and serve the trans community every day in the city of Long Beach.
“Why not make it a multi-million dollar festival where all the money can go directly back to the trans community?” Macias said. “They need a center. They need doctors who are specialists in the needs of the trans community. I would love to see a building with [gender-affirming] clinics and another level to have offices you can work out of and show your creative talents. And eventually housing, especially for trans youth.”
“I would love the goal to be that the event gets out there on social media, that it has the full support of elected officials, not only local, but state officials, so that everybody can know that Trans Pride is in Long Beach and we need their help.”
Trans Pride will not only host a multitude of performing artists, but booths to provide the trans community with everything they need, from hugs to gender-affirming clothing.
“We’ll have a ‘free mom hugs’ booth which is a really touching experience, especially for those who haven’t had proper parental figures in their life,” Whitmore said.
Affirming OC will be attending and putting up a “glam closet” where people can look for gender-affirming clothing, try things on and take them home free of charge.
As Long Beach Trans Pride has grown and evolved since it began, more corporations have joined to sponsor the event but community members can also volunteer to help the event run smoothly.
“Whether you want to help with the planning committee and be a part of making this event happen or if you just want to volunteer on the day of, to give us some on-the-ground support, we always need hands and new voices,” Whitmore said. “I would love to see a more diverse cohort of gender-expansive people helping lead this, I think that could open the doors to some exciting new developments.”
“What we need is support, we need more members, we need more volunteers,” Macias said. “I just want the trans community to stand proud and to shine and say, ‘This is our festival.’”
For more details about the event, which takes place on Saturday, Sept. 28 from 1 to 7 p.m., visit the Long Beach Trans Pride website.
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