'Finding love, acceptance and community'
Mount Pleasant community celebrates Pride
Hundreds of community members gathered to celebrate Pride Month in Mount Pleasant Saturday, as Great Lakes Bay Pride hosted the Mount Pleasant Pride Festival at Broadway Park.
This event celebrated the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and included food trucks, vendors, resources and performances. This acronym stands for Two-Spirited, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, plus.
Michigan Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Coalition Eniigaangidoong (Chairperson) Kaine Andy ran the booth to explain what Two-Sprit is and to bring awareness to their two-spirit relatives.
“There’s many definitions for two-spirited, but the one that I prefer to use is ... someone having two spirit is having one feminine and one masculine spirit combined together for one person,” Andy said.
People from Central Michigan University, Isabella County residents and others from surrounding areas attended. Great Lakes Bay Pride sponsored several volunteers, including the Harmony Diversity Choir, directed by Jake Salisbury. Salisbury said they are looking for more people to join the choir and no audition is required.
Several members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and allies attended the pride festival, either alone or with friends and family.
Brother and sister Sam and Daria Batzner attended the pride festival, along with their family. They said it was nice to be able to share the event with each other.
“Especially during these times, it is important to have like-minded members of the community to come together and support one another,” Daria Batzner said. “I like seeing all the other people out and about, expressing themselves.”
The Batzners are Mount Pleasant locals. Sam Batzner is a student at Renaissance Public School Academy and Daria Batzner is a student at Central Michigan University.
“I like when other people are able to express themselves, as well as myself too,” Sam Batzner said. “I get to meet and probably make a lot of friends who like expressing themselves and being who they are.”
While attendance was important to the Pride Festival, the volunteers were critical. The festival brought together several volunteers from many different organizations.
One, Gracee Day, came from the Mount Pleasant Pride Center and was running the kid's corner at Pride. Day said the center’s goal is to bring queer people together to find community and build a connection to other resources.
“I like how many people showed up for our community,” Day said. “It’s a small town, and I think it’s really beautiful that we’re even able to host something as big as this.”
Many attendees and volunteers, including Day, talked about the importance of coming together and being a strong community during these times.
Micki Christiansen has been volunteering with the Free Mom Hugs organization since 2019. She said she tries to volunteer at four to five prides a year, but this year she is doing seven.
“There are so many people out there that don’t have love and support; their parents think that love is conditional,” Christiansen said. “I want to be able to offer unconditional love and support to people that might need it, and if I can do it by offering a hug or a high-five then I am happy to do it.
“I love seeing young people and coming out and finding love, acceptance and community."
