The Long Beach Pride festival scheduled for this weekend was abruptly canceled Friday afternoon, with organizers and the city of Long Beach trading blame.<\/p>\n
Pride, a local nonprofit organization, has run the festival for decades. This year, however, organizers didn\u2019t provide \u201csufficient information to safely permit the event,\u201d the city said in a statement late Friday.<\/p>\n
In her own statement<\/a>, Pride president Tonya Martin emphasized that the organization is volunteer-run and said, \u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n Until Friday, the event seemed to be proceeding as scheduled, with two-day tickets selling for $75. But in the background, the city says, Pride hadn\u2019t submitted critical paperwork needed for safety inspections of the stage, electrical systems and emergency exit plans.<\/p>\n In an email to Pride this week reviewed by the Long Beach Post, a city official said this information had been requested \u201cmultiple times over the past several months and again recently.\u201d Plans that were submitted were inadequate, the email said.<\/p>\n Long Beach spokesperson Laath Martin said city staff made the final decision not to permit the event on Thursday but left open \u201cthe possibility of a shortened event this weekend\u201d if Pride could submit the needed documents. It never did, he said.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> \u2014 contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep it running \u2014 after Pride asked for help. Pride also reportedly had trouble selling tickets to the festival this year<\/a>, further contributing to financial problems.<\/p>\n The festival also struggled with vendors in addition to the permitting process, said City Councilmember Cindy Allen.<\/p>\n \u201cI join our community members who feel deeply disappointed about this situation. I support the queer community and want to see this festival thrive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Pride said it was \u201cdeeply disappointed by the City\u2019s decision to cancel\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Pride called on city officials, including Allena and Mayor Rex Richardson, to reverse course or intervene.<\/p>\n The cancellation, the organization said, \u201cundermines decades of volunteer work and community trust. And it weakens the very values Long Beach claims to champion.\u201d<\/p>\n The parade is scheduled<\/a> to begin Sunday at 10 a.m. on Ocean Boulevard at Lindero Avenue. The city said it is also highlighting alternative events<\/a> still happening throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Long Beach Pride festival scheduled for this weekend was abruptly canceled Friday afternoon, with organizers and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-318326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}