Fox Valley Pride festival creates a space, highlights a culture

To get a sense of just how big the Fox Valley Pride Festival has become, consider this: Dana Johnson and his team began working on the event in June … of last year.

What started off as a picnic a few years back will realize its fullest potential to date when the festival kicks off on June 21. Johnson, Fox Valley Pride’s president, started thinking about making the festival a bigger event two years ago when the group was called Appleton Pride. Back then the committee consisted of just a handful of people. That committee has more than doubled in size as have the festivities and the musical acts. Johnson expects the crowd to reach its highest level as well – nearly 4,000 are anticipated to attend the Jones Park extravaganza.

“I thought, you know, we could make this a bit more inclusive,” says Johnson. “It’s been a year-long process. We take about two weeks off after the festival and then we start again. We meet monthly for the first few months and then it becomes every other week until May and then it’s a couple of hours every week.”

This year, for the first time, the festival will begin with a Promenade down College Avenue starting at noon at the History Museum and culminating at Houdini Plaza where it coincides with the Make Music Day Dance Party. 

Then it’s on to Jones Park at 1 pm for seven hours of music, dance, games and speeches. It ends with a drag show.

More than 40 sponsors and 125 vendors support the event, as does the community at large. Appleton Downtown Inc, for instance, was thrilled when Fox Valley Pride approached them with the idea of the promenade despite the fact that it will travel right through the heart of the Appleton Farm Market.

It all points to a community that not only is accepting of diversity but openly embraces and celebrates it. For Johnson and Fox Valley Pride, the annual festival is an opportunity to try to expand the gay community’s visibility.

“For me, this creates a space, no matter what age you are, no matter if you identify in the community or you're an ally, that you belong and that there are people from diverse backgrounds who will love you, who will support you,” Johnson says. “Today is just one day, but now you've just learned about all the resources and you've been entertained by people that you can now follow, who have positive messages, who will support you for the next 365 days until we do it all over, you know? 

“So for me, that's the goal. It’s that people feel like they are loved, respected and supported.”

This year's festival comes against a background of hate

The Fox Valley Pride Festival is the area’s most notable manifestation of Pride Month, which, every June since 1970 has commemorated the Stonewall Riots in New York City that gave rise to the modern gay rights movement. 

This year’s event will take place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s strident policies against diversity, equity and inclusion. From Day 1, the administration has stifled DEI via financial threats and outright firings of people not willing to cooperate. 

The Trump administration’s greatest attacks, though, have been against the trans community, from attempting to ban trans and non-binary folks from serving in the military to outlawing gender-affirming care to resurrecting the dead names of those who are transitioning. Dead names are the names given at birth to trans and non-binary folks who often take on new names. This creates myriad legal and financial barriers and is seen in the LGBTQ+ community as an attempt to cancel trans people.

Johnson, who also works in child welfare at the Department of Children and Families and is a member of the Outagamie County Board, has to walk a fine line in all his roles in the community, though he is unflinching in his advocacy.

“(Fox Valley pride) does do some advocacy, but we're not naturally a political organization that will go out and do advocacy,” he says. “We have lots of partners that do that, sure, but I think the work that we do inherently has politicalness to it, because we're often having to fight against oppression, or the oppression that's happening under the current federal administration.”

Johnson moved to Appleton 12 years ago where he met his partner – now his husband. At the time he didn’t see a lot of spaces for the gay community. When he talks about acceptance in Appleton and the Fox Valley he talks about layers, noting that it is all fairly nuanced. Mostly he sees Appleton as diverse and accommodating of other cultures, citing the Hmong community and African Heritage, Inc. But he admits that he sometimes misses the greater sense of safety he feels in Madison and Milwaukee, two cities he has lived in.

Last June FVP decided to expand its reach and hold the festival in Neenah. The organization received a hate letter from a Neenah resident, essentially suggesting that the gay community didn’t belong in a public park. 

“It bothers me in the sense that that mentality still exists,” Johnson says. “That you wouldn’t want people to have a festival? And we’re not asking anyone to change. We’re not even asking anyone to care. We just want to have our culture festival and you could come or not.”

'It surprises me at times'

Johnson ran for mayor in 2020 and knocked, he estimates, on 10,000 doors. While he says he rarely met open hostility, he did meet some voters who made his sexual orientation an issue.

He appreciates that the community pushed back hard on one of his fellow board members after that person made an overtly transphobic comment during a board meeting a couple of years back. But he also admits to not always feeling safe right in the heart of Appleton.

“I have felt like Appleton compared to other communities I’ve lived in was like, wow, the capital of gay people and a really significant inclusive community,” he says. “But to this day – and I’m pretty out and proud – I will not walk down College Avenue in the summer holding my husband’s hand because every time I do, inevitably someone screams something homophobic out their window. Not that I’m into  public displays of affection in general but there are just those moments you have to be on guard.

“I just never felt that in Milwaukee or Madison. So for me, that for a city this size and how inclusive I think it is or thought it was, it surprises me at times.”

Johnson takes the long view on society’s acceptance, noting that the original gay rights movement pretty significantly advanced the cause before it saw a pullback under Reagan and then a re-emergence again in 90s. Gay marriage became legal in 2015. It’s two steps forward, one step back. Johnson sees society currently in another step-back phase.

“In my neighborhood there are more signs that espouse hate and you see Confederate flags hoisted on the back of pickup trucks driving down College Avenue,” he says. “And you see the anti-semitism and the white supremacy. And even if you are in another marginalized community (like the gay community) you begin to feel like you’re still targeted even though they may be targeting someone else.”

'I get completely emotional'

Which is why Johnson feels such purpose in organizing something as uplifting as the Pride Festival. He’s excited about the Promenade, which he says began as a simple 5K fundraiser until people decided that a parade would be so much more fun.

“It’s just another way to say, ‘We’re here,’” Johnson says. “I think it showcases us personally and even if it’s not necessarily for others, the community has said yes because they could have said no. So we’re doing this and we hope you support us too.”

Michael Grabner kicks off the music at 1 p.m. at Jones Park. Among the other musicians are The Traveling Suitcase, Kat and The Hurricane, Venus DeMars and Rai Hudson. There will be an ongoing cornhole tournament. The drag show starts at 6:30. 

Johnson promises – or fervently hopes, anyway – that Fox Valley Pride will not need to use the rain date of June 28. Last year at Neenah it was pretty much a washout. 

June 21 will mark the fruition of 50 weeks of planning, of training volunteers, of procuring vendors and sponsors and musical acts, of obtaining all the proper city permits, of getting Jones Park ready, of making sure security knows how to handle potential situations, of making sure that everyone has a great time and that Fox Valley Pride is providing the optimal showcase for a gay community that sometimes feels like it has to go a little bit beyond to be accepted.

“Because the converse of that is you’re silent,” Johnson says. “Ultimately for me when I go to the Fox Valley Pride Festival we’re having our day and someone will come up to me and say this is the first Pride I’ve ever been to and they’re 65 years old and they drove two and a half hours to come to this one, yeah? Or you have the nine-year old kid who doesn't know yet where they're at or what they identify and and they say, this was really cool. 

“There are faith communities here, and there are health resources here, and there are books about me, and there are people singing on the stage that I identify as. This is just nothing you can buy and that's priceless. And by Sunday I’m exhausted. And every time I get completely emotional.”