Pride Month wraps up with flag party, walk in Petoskey

PETOSKEY — Hundreds of people gathered in Petoskey on Sunday to wave flags in all the colors of the rainbow, to sing, to dance, to fly kites and to celebrate Pride Month together as a community.

This year marks the sixth annual Flag Party and Pride Walk in Petoskey.

More: Petoskey celebrates Pride Month with sixth annual flag party and walk

Kristin Jardine, co-founder of the LGBTQ+ Alliance of Petoskey, said they have kept the event pretty simple on purpose, despite attendance growing each year.

“We’re doing this for a very specific reason,” she said. “We just want this to be a dedicated time for visibility, to just be about getting more visible flags into our community.”

As people met in Pennsylvania Park for the flag party, Jardine handed out a variety of flags and stickers. The assembled group all waved their flags together in unison before heading out on the walk.

“We’ve found and we feel in ourselves, especially myself, have really experienced how much safer it feels to walk through the community,” Jardine said. “Being able to recognize that there are people, whether they are part of the LGBTQ community or they are allies, but they exist in our space and it’s really powerful and it’s created a lot of community around the space already just by doing this.”

The event draws a wide range of people each year, from children to the elderly and from all around Northern Michigan.

“It feels powerful because you have people who come every year, and every year there are brand new people, people that stumble upon it and still didn’t know it existed,” Jardine said. “It is powerful and beautiful to see that it’s still important and it will continue to be. A lot of people that are in the elder space have never experienced the opportunity in our community to do this before and that is a powerful thing. Every year there are people who come with a lot of emotion just to be able to stand as themselves in the space.”

— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Pride Month wraps up with flag party, walk in Petoskey