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Major celebrities, LGBT community leaders, and performers all participate. Today, the LA Pride parade attracts hundreds of thousands of people who line Santa Monica Boulevard to participate in the celebration. “It’s because of these issues that Pride events are just as relevant now as they were when they started 45 years ago.”įorty-five years later, and the mission is still the same. “While a lot has certainly changed for our community since the original Pride Parade took place, there are still many issues that affect basic TLGB equalities,” says Co-President Patti DiLuigi. Permit denials and police hostility threatened the event, but the parade proceeded with thousands of participants, thanks to the support of local community organizations. “Two, four, six, eight, gay is just as good as straight,” could be heard being chanted down the streets of Hollywood at the very first pride march. “It was a microcosm of what was taking place throughout the country and we thought, what better way to make noise, get attention and excite our community than by dressing up and putting on a parade,” “At the time we had no idea what we were creating, we just wanted to acknowledge a courageous group that stood up to being bullied by police,” said parade founding father, Reverend Troy Perry. The LA Pride parade began in 1970, a year after the riots, when Reverend Troy Perry, Reverend Bob Humphries and Morris Knight took the initiative to start the very first pride parade. It was the beginning of the modern liberation movement, launched as a rebellion from the riots at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York. The very first LA Pride parade began as a way to honour the fight for equality and celebrate the diversity of the LGBT community following the Stonewall riot in New York City. West Hollywood and organizers of the Christopher Street West LA Pride Parade are preparing for what will become an epic celebration marking the 45 th anniversary of the very first gay pride parade, held in West Hollywood. This article was published on April 23rd, 2015