Pride Festival postponed, Fabulous Arts and ALSO Youth spaces wrecked.
By Noah Vinsky
Original Air Date: October 25, 2024
Host: Sarasota’s LGBTQ community has already been challenged by Florida politics. And now it has been hit hard by the recent storms. Noah Vinsky tallies the damage.
Noah Vinsky: As Sarasota rebuilds from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, several LGBTQ organizations are reeling from the storm. Project Pride SRQ usually holds their annual Gulf Coast Pride Festival in downtown Sarasota’s Rosemary District during this time of year. In fact, it was originally scheduled for October 19th. That was until Hurricane Milton forced them to cancel. Jason Champion, the President of Project Pride SRQ, said that the festival usually brings in around 3,000 attendees. He said having to roll back an event of that scale was difficult.
Jason Champion
Jason Champion: So, unraveling that work that has been done was clearly a challenging effort for all of us as board members. But, we know that we needed to be able to push through, and make sure that our community was safe and secure. And this decision was made that we needed to push until a later date when more resources were more available, not just to us but to others in the community as well.
NV: Fabulous Arts Foundation is a Sarasota based nonprofit that was about to open a safe space for the LGBTQ community. Helene forced them to delay the soft opening of their LGBTQ center. And then, Milton forced them to entirely rebuild. The Fab Arts Foundation said the center suffered severe roof and flood damage, and has set up a crowdfunding campaign that has raised over seven thousand dollars as of Thursday afternoon.
But they were not the only local LGBTQ center that is now left rebuilding. ALSO Youth, an organization for LGBTQ youth based in Sarasota and Manatee counties, was forced to relocate to Bradenton after their Sarasota center was indefinitely closed due to storm damage.
Champion talked about some of the challenges that community-based LGBTQ organizations are facing after the storms, and how his own organization was able to help people throughout Milton.
Just before it was supposed to open, Milton wrecked the Fabulous Arts Foundation’s space in Sarasota. Photo: Courtesy FAF
JC: I mean, we partnered quite nicely with the other organizations here in town. And it’s sad to see that maybe their properties or buildings were damaged during the storm, and having to relocate is never easy. Luckily, our building did not sustain any sort of damage, and believe it or not it actually kept power the whole time. So we were able to use our office for those that had lost power as a little bit of a resource center for folks.
NV: Champion says he has lived and worked in Sarasota for nearly 20 years. Despite the area being battered by three hurricanes this year, he’s called it one of the most resilient communities he’s ever lived in, and is confident the community will continue to unite to help rebuild the area.
JC: The bond that we all share of living somewhere magical where people actually vacation, and we get to live here, makes it a little unique in the fact that we’re all bonded together to help build back our community stronger and better than what it was before.
NV: This is Noah Vinsky for WSLR News.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.