Ki Brown, 25, and Ky Ferba, 23, said they became friends in high school because they were both masculine-presenting and openly gay.
“At the time, there wasn’t a lot of other people like that in school,” said Brown.
Ferba was a freshman and Brown was a junior when they found out that gay marriage was legal. Now Brown is married and Ferba is dating Brown’s sister.
As they stood on North Broadway and waited for Sunday’s Pride Parade to start, they joined thousands of others who gathered to celebrate and march for LGBTQ+ rights. They said support for LGBTQ+ people has been slow but forward-moving in Illinois.
But they said they believe there is still room for progress — especially in an important presidential election year and after parade cutbacks from the mayor.
Brown and Ferba, who wore matching red and blue outfits, said they drove 40 minutes Sunday morning to get to Chicago from Ford Heights.
“We just want to be treated the same. We just want to participate and love,” Ferba said.
For Julissa Rosario, Chicago’s Pride Parade is a family affair.
Rosario, 23, has been helping with the parade since 2017. Her grandmother, Milta Fuentes, has been part of organizing the parade for more than 20 years.
“It’s kind of something in my family, that we all get together, participate in, and bring our family and friends,” she said.
The Irving Park resident was one of the parade marshals. She arrived early to check in other parade marshals.
Before the parade began, food vendors, face painters and sellers of Pride flags and T-shirts set up to sell their wares. By 10 a.m., the crowds began to pick up, lining the street in anticipation of the parade, which stepped off at 11 a.m.
Attendees braved elbow-to-elbow crowds on the sidewalks. They cheered for hours, waving rainbow flags and swaying their hips to the music. People who lived in buildings and houses looked on from open windows.
The groups with floats spanned from various religious denominations and nonprofits to sports teams and radio stations; Cook County Health, the Chicago Fire Department and Chicago Public Schools were all in attendance.
The first Pride Parade in Chicago was held in 1970, on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York. The city’s annual parade is the largest in the Midwest.
Last year, organizers said the parade was the largest in recent memory. But this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration announced the parade would be downsized and the start time moved up to maintain safety and ensure police presence.
Johnson said the parade would be limited to 125 groups, but following pushback from the advisory council and other groups, Johnson increased the number of groups to 150, still a nearly 25% decrease from last year.
The procession took three hours, an hour and a half shorter than last year.
Kenya Nott, 33, said she was disappointed that the parade was shortened.
“I think we should be bigger. We should be gayer,” she said, dancing to the music drifting from floats nearby in a mini sparkle dress, a rainbow scarf tied around her head.
Nott stood with Second City Sisters. Their umbrella organization, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, is an international group of queer and trans “nuns” that raises funds for other LGBTQ nonprofits and promotes safer sex and sex positivity.
Nott said she felt a serious calling to work with the organization while living in Orlando, Florida, during a 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub. She was out that night and knew someone who was killed. She said she made it her mission from that point on to spread love and joy.
Nott said it was their Pride Parade debut. The group started a new Chicago house this February.
“It’s like our convent in a way, but we don’t do the whole vow of chastity, we do the fun stuff,” she said.
This year’s parade theme was “Pride is Power,” said Steve Long, parade co-coordinator.
The parade grand marshals were Art Johnston and José Pepe Peña; Myles and Precious Brady-Davis; and Fortune Feimster and Jax Smith — who met at Chicago Pride in 2015, just days after the historic ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court for nationwide marriage equality.
The parade began a few blocks south of its usual starting point, at Sheridan Road and Broadway in Lakeview, and proceeded south on Halsted Street, east on Belmont Avenue, south on Broadway and east on Diversey Parkway to Sheridan Road.
At least one parade participant held a rainbow Israeli flag, expressing support in light of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Others wore shirts reading “LGBTQ+ pride is a Jewish value.”
Down the street on Belmont Avenue, protesters from Behind Enemy Lines passed out a flyer reading “Take the Palestine Vote Pledge,” urging people not to vote for politicians who have voiced support for Israel in the war.
Around noon, about 15 pro-Palestinian protesters with banners temporarily blocked the parade near Broadway and Wellington Avenue.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Patrick Stevenson, a 41-year-old from the northern suburbs said that Pride this year came at an important time.
Stevenson, who has been attending the Pride Parade in Chicago since 2002, stood with a group of friends and got ready to board a float for the Boys & Girls Club. He proudly said their float this year would emphasize the importance of getting out to vote.
“Exercising the right to vote is especially critical this year,” he said.
Timothy Hayes, Shaun Longoria and Chris Ashby — who called themselves “part of the same drag family” — said they dressed up for the occasion to make others feel safe to do the same.
Hayes wore a black shirt with rainbow hearts, rainbow fringe sleeves and a sequined visor. Longoria wore a rainbow cape and a T-shirt that read: “The only choice I made was to be myself.” Ashby wore a pink and white dress and knee-high white boots.
They said this year’s election was complicated, but that the difference in the two parties’ treatment of the LGBTQ community is paramount.
“One person supports part of our community with trans people, the other one does not,” said Hayes.
Illinois is often considered an LGBTQ haven in the Midwest. Experts have said there is an increasing number of people from the LGBTQ community moving to Illinois from conservative states in search of a safer and more welcoming environment.
Despite recent proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation around the country, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has long prioritized LGBTQ rights, signing two new bills Sunday in honor of Pride month: one that removes barriers to the process of changing legal gender on a birth certificate and one that requires nonprofits to publicly report boards of directors’ demographic information to encourage diversity.
Portia Maxie, 33, said she wanted to spread a pro-LGBTQ message to her kids early.
She brought nine of her 10 children to the parade. She said her second-oldest daughter came out to her at age 9. She is now 15.
“I’m her biggest supporter,” Maxie said.
She looked at her family, who sat under a Starbucks awning and watched the parade go by.
“I want them all to be themselves,” she said. “You never know what they might come out to be.”
