HUMBOLDT — Community members are forming an official Humboldt Pride committee in order to host LGBT+ community events throughout the year.
Andrew Matheson, a Humboldt Pride representative, said while there was an unofficial group of people organizing Pride Weeks in the past, it wasn’t an official committee like they are creating now.
After the 2019 Pride Week, Matheson said a meeting was held where ideas were discussed on how to improve next year’s Pride Week. One of the suggestions brought forward was to have an official committee formed.
“This year, specifically, we had a big number of people who wanted to be more upfront organizers with Pride — which is awesome,” Matheson said. “Every year our Pride celebrations attendance-wise get bigger, but also people interested in coming forward and being actively involved and visibly involved grows as well.”
He said with having a committee formed it will create positions responsible with forming activities and events throughout the year.
“Humboldt Pride has sort of been a group for hosting Pride Week, but what we want this committee to do is hopefully push Pride and activities, guest speakers or things like that throughout the year — not just once a week be visible then drop off and be in the background again.”
Matheson said that additionally, with the current structure of Humboldt Pride, there is a lack of documentation on the local LGBT+ community’s history. He said that he finds when people leave they take the history with it.
“Every year we do Pride week I’m always asking people who attend, ‘Do you remember things in the past?’ Because I’m a big person in recognizing where it’s come from and giving people recognition for those things — but the unfortunate thing I find is either the people who were doing it before have left, not passing it on to anyone.”
He hopes in having a committee there will be a more documented history on the local LGBT+ community going forward.
Matheson expects that one item to become a focus when the committee forms is to organize adult socials for local LGBT+ community members to be able to meet up.
“We’re had a lot of interest, just people coming up to people in Humboldt that they know have been involved with Humboldt Pride in the past and asking if there is things for adults and things for parents.”
Another item he expects to be discussed is changing the name of “Humboldt Pride” to something more inclusive of the surrounding communities outside of Humboldt.
Applications to join the committee can be found on Humboldt Pride’s Facebook page. The deadline for applications is Oct. 1.
