Meet the 2019 Long Beach Pride Parade Grand Marshals
The Long Beach Pride Team2 min read
Q Voice News introduced the 2019 grand marshals: an actress, a drag icon, two transgender activists, an educator, a community builder and Equality California.
In April 2019, as we got ready to mark the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, Q Voice News introduced the honorees who would lead our parade down Ocean Boulevard on May 19, 2019.
The grand marshals for this year’s Long Beach Pride Parade include a daytime soap opera actress, a drag queen, and two transgender activists.
Q Voice News
The outlet noted that the public nominated candidates and the Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Board made the final picks. That is how it should be. These honors come from the community.
Who Led the Way in 2019
Kate Linder, who had played Esther Valentine on The Young and the Restless for 37 years, was a founding board member of TV Cares, the Television Academy’s AIDS awareness and fundraising arm. Delta Work, a Long Beach native and former Miss Gay Pride Long Beach, had won an Emmy in 2018 as a producer on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Karina Samala chaired the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission Transgender Advisory Council and served on West Hollywood’s Transgender Advisory Board. Oliver Nieto, 18, was a senior at Renaissance High School for the Arts and the school’s first transgender student council president. He hoped to study graphic design and become a cartoon animator.
Megan Kerr, elected to the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education in 2014, held her first meeting after that election with LGBTQ+ high school students at the Long Beach LGBTQ Center. Equality California was honored as well.
Mario Ernesto Gonzalez, the Port of Long Beach’s manager of community relations, received a nod that felt especially close to home. Q Voice News wrote that he had helped organize our Teen Pride, Family Fun Zone and Senior Fun Zone with the port’s support.
Members of the public nominated potential grand marshals, who were selected by the Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Board.
Q Voice News
Two of our seven honorees that year were transgender leaders, one of them still in high school. In a year devoted to Stonewall, where transgender people stood at the front, that felt right.
Thank you to Q Voice News for introducing these leaders to our readers.
Read the full story at Q Voice News.
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