The Long Beach Pride festival scheduled for this weekend was abruptly canceled Friday afternoon, with organizers and the city of Long Beach trading blame.
Pride, a local nonprofit organization, has run the festival for decades. This year, however, organizers didn’t provide “sufficient information to safely permit the event,” the city said in a statement late Friday.
In their own statement, Pride emphasized that its organization is volunteer-run and said, “At a time when our community is being targeted and made vulnerable, Long Beach should be doing more to protect and uplift us, not taking away one of the most visible and meaningful expressions of inclusion our city has.”
The city did not immediately answer questions about what apparently derailed the permitting process and when Pride was notified of the problems. Until Friday, the event seemed to be proceeding as scheduled, with two-day tickets selling for $75.
The free Pride parade on Sunday is still scheduled to happen. The nonprofit used to also organize the parade, but the city took it over in recent years — contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep it running — after Pride asked for help.
Pride said it was “deeply disappointed by the City’s decision to cancel” the festival. Concerts and events were scheduled from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with the earliest events kicking off Friday evening, right around the same time the cancellation was announced.
Pride called on city officials, local politicians and Mayor Rex Richardson to reverse course or intervene.
The cancellation, the organization said, “undermines decades of volunteer work and community trust. And it weakens the very values Long Beach claims to champion.”
The parade is still scheduled for Sunday at 10 a.m. on Ocean Boulevard.
This is a breaking news story. It will be updated.