Pride Celebration Lunch

As part of our events to celebrate Pride Month, we held an ‘Eat the Rainbow’ Pride Lunch in the office to coincide with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots on June 28th, 1969. Everyone was asked to bring in some food to share, with bonus points awarded for anything rainbow themed! Not only were we able to celebrate Pride and enjoy some very tasty food, but we raised £270 for our chosen Pride Charity, Proud2Be.

The Stonewall Riots are largely recognisedasbeing the catalyst event which transformed the gay rights movement in the United States and across the globe. In an era of illegal gay bars, widespread homophobia and oppression, the events of the night of June 28th 1969 started as a response to a police raidatthe Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City. More protests erupted over the following days, with residents of the Village organising activist groups demanding the right to live openly without fear of being arrested.

A year after the riots, the first gay pride marches were held across the United States. Within a few years, gay rights organisations were established across the world, with June now being permanently recognised as Pride Month.

Whilst we are lucky to live in a society where there is a much wider acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, there is still a long way to go before global acceptance is a reality. Homosexuality is still illegal in many countries around the world, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are still persecuted and harmed on a daily basis. We are therefore extremely thankful to organisations like Proud2Be who seek to end discrimination and support LGBTQ+ people to be their true selves.

At AWP we have marked Pride Month not only with today’s lunch, but have been spotlighting key themes and figures each week on our staff noticeboard and intranet, and last Friday we were joined by Max Price, co-founder of Proud2Be, who talked to us about the charity and answered questions from around the office.