Meet the 2019 Long Beach Pride Parade Grand Marshals

Fifty years after Stonewall, Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride is proud to name the people and organizations who will lead the 36th Annual Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Parade down Ocean Boulevard on Sunday, May 19, 2019. This year’s theme is “A Million Moments of Pride, Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall.”

Grand Marshals are nominated by community members and selected by our Board for their service to the LGBTQ+ community. Several of the honors carry the names of people who shaped Pride: our founders Judi Doyle, Marilyn Barlow and Robert Crow, and Morris Kight, who co-founded the Christopher Street West Gay Pride Parade in Los Angeles. This year’s class includes a soap opera favorite, a hometown drag legend, a statewide civil rights organization, a school board leader, a transgender rights pioneer, a public servant who helped build Teen Pride and an 18-year-old artist who wants everyone to know it gets better.

The 2019 Grand Marshals

Grand Parade Marshal: Kate Linder

Kate Linder has played Esther Valentine on CBS’ The Young and the Restless for 37 years, and in 2008 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her film work includes Hysteria, Erased, Miss Meadows, Garry Marshall’s Mother’s Day, Dead Love and The Charnel House, with upcoming roles in Charlie Matthau’s Book of Leah, Stereotypically You and Voice from the Stone.

Off screen, Linder has stood with the LGBTQ+ community for her whole career. She was a founding board member of TV Cares, the TV Academy’s former AIDS awareness and fundraising arm, and produced an annual awards show honoring positive media portrayals of people living with HIV and AIDS. She has judged drag competitions and turns up for LGBTQ+ charity events, but her focus is the serious work: HIV and AIDS awareness and fundraising, and issues like harassment and equality.

Marilyn Barlow Parade Grand Marshal: Delta Work

Delta Work is one of our own. A Long Beach native and former Miss Gay Pride Long Beach, she earned a spot on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2011 after more than 20 years in the art of drag. She is part of the group that produces the acclaimed Dreamgirls Revue of Southern California, which makes its home at Hamburger Mary’s.

In 2016, Delta joined RuPaul’s Drag Race behind the scenes as a creative producer. In 2018 she won her first Emmy Award for that work, making her the first and only contestant on the show to achieve that distinction. As a wig stylist, her work has appeared in campaigns for MAC Cosmetics, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and in Google television commercials.

She is a familiar face on internet shows such as VH1’s The Pit Stop, provides commentary for Logo and writes for other television shows. She still performs in six weekly Southern California revues and travels the country as a cabaret entertainer.

“Morris Kight” Political Grand Marshal: Equality California

Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization and has worked for full LGBTQ+ equality in California for 20 years. It brings the voices of LGBTQ+ people and allies to institutions of power across California and the United States, working toward a world that is healthy, just and fully equal for all LGBTQ+ people. Its approach is to inspire, advocate and mobilize through an inclusive movement.

“Whitey Littlefield” Community Bridge Building Award: Megan Kerr

Megan Kerr is a lifelong Long Beach resident with more than 16 years of service to Long Beach schools. Before her election to the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education in 2014, she was a parent advocate, volunteer and PTA member who showed up in classrooms, offices, music and sports programs, and green teams. She is a current member and immediate past president of the board.

Kerr has made LGBTQ+ students a priority from the start. Her first meeting after her election was with high school youth at The Center, to hear what they needed. She has supported GLSEN teacher and staff trainings, the FAIR Education Act in materials and curriculum, and student access to clubs and community opportunities, and she advocates for policies that make schools safer and more welcoming for every student.

She also serves on the board of the California Conference for Equality and Justice, which works to end bias, bigotry and racism through education, conflict resolution and advocacy. She supports The Center, the CARE program at St. Mary’s, the GSA Network and the City’s programs and services, and she fosters dogs with Sparky and the Gang animal rescue. Kerr lives in Bixby Knolls.

Judith Doyle Community Grand Marshal: Karina Samala

Born in Manila, Philippines, Karina Samala earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. Philippines and spent 12 years as a senior process engineer at Northrop Grumman. She now produces the Queen USA, Queen of California and Queen of the Universe transgender pageants.

For more than 25 years, Samala has campaigned for equal rights and human rights for transgender people in Long Beach and Los Angeles County. She chairs the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission Transgender Advisory Council and serves on the City of West Hollywood Transgender Advisory Board, which advises on employment, housing, health care, education, equal rights and hate crime prevention. As chair of the City of Los Angeles Human Services Commission Transgender Working Group, she helped create the “Recommended Model Policies and Standards” for the Los Angeles Police Department’s interactions with transgender individuals.

She has also worked with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on transgender policies and is a member of LAPD’s Community Police Advisory Board Jail Division and the Sheriff’s Department LGBTQ+ Advisory Council. Samala serves on the boards of the Asian Pacific Islander Pride Council and the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team and is president of the Board of Directors of the Imperial Court of Los Angeles and Hollywood.

Robert Crow Community Grand Marshal: Mario Ernesto Gonzalez

Long Beach native Mario Ernesto Gonzalez started serving his community as a teenager, volunteering in local elections and in the community. At 16, he joined the City of Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services as a peer health educator and later a health education associate. He managed a peer-led teen pregnancy prevention program staffed by high school and college students, an HIV education and prevention program, and a mobile resource center for young people, and he represented the Health Department on local, regional, county and state HIV and AIDS planning groups.

Today he is manager of community relations at the Port of Long Beach, where he leads community engagement, educational outreach and special events. He is best known for standing up for LGBTQ+ youth and seniors. He served on the board of The Center Long Beach, helping raise thousands of dollars for programs and services, and with the Port’s support he helped create the festival’s first Teen Pride event, the Family Fun Zone and the Senior Zone. (The Port itself received the Community Bridge Building Award in 2018 for that support.)

Gonzalez also served on the board of the Community Hispanic Association (Centro C.H.A.), advocating for workforce development programs for youth of color. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Health Science and a Master of Science in Public Policy from California State University, Long Beach, and a public relations certificate from UCLA.

Dr. Robert Garcia Youth Grand Marshal: Oliver Nieto

The youth honor is named for Dr. Robert Garcia, who was our 2015 Grand Marshal Honoree as Mayor of Long Beach, and the Mayor selects each year’s recipient. This year’s choice is Oliver Nieto, an 18-year-old transgender advocate for trans and LGBTQ+ rights. Spanish is his first language, and he identifies as Hispanic American. A senior, he is the first transgender student to serve as student council president at Renaissance High School for the Arts in Downtown Long Beach.

Nieto received the school’s Digital Art Award for Continuing Excellence and was commissioned by the Long Beach Police Department’s Women’s Advisory Group to design a sticker for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. In fall 2019 he heads to California State University, Dominguez Hills, to study graphic design, and he hopes to become a cartoon animator one day.

He is honest that the road has not been easy, and that it isn’t over. He plans to keep going through the hard days, and his goal is to help as many people as possible, LGBTQ+ or not, hold on through rough times and remember that “It Does Get Better.”

Parade Day

The parade steps off at 10:30 a.m. at Ocean Boulevard and Lindero Avenue, travels west on Ocean Boulevard and ends at the curve on Alamitos Avenue. A pre-parade show starts at 9:30 a.m. at the Parade Grandstand on Ocean Boulevard between Cherry and Junipero avenues, where our parade commentators will get the crowd ready.

Over the years, the Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Celebration has grown into one of the premier Pride events in the nation, drawing thousands of participants over two days. Find a spot along Ocean Boulevard, bring your loudest cheer and help us thank this year’s Grand Marshals in person.