By Nick Grabbe

Renu Gehring has had a successful professional life, but she says her main identity is as a mom. She has a 25-year-old trans son who struggled before transitioning from female to male and was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa as a teen.

She says affirming his gender identity was not a choice but “a must-have” and “life-giving.”

“I feel strongly that my body helped give birth to my child, who is now trans, and our support has given him new rebirth,” she says.

Gehring will be one of the speakers at a rally following Amherst’s first Pride march on June 22. The event will honor LGBTQIA+ folks and focus attention on their strengths and challenges.

It will start at 11:00 am with sign-making in the parking lot of Amherst Regional High School. The march is scheduled to leave the high school at noon, go by the track, and proceed on a blocked-off North Pleasant Street to the town common.

Speakers at the rally on the common, scheduled for 1:00-3:00 pm, will include State Rep. Mindy Domb, who helped initiate planning for the event.

“The positive impact will be felt by all of us,” Domb says. “I’m looking forward to marching with neighbors and expressing our commitment to safety, individual rights, collective support, and acceptance. We are a diverse community and we are the better for it.” 

June is Pride Month, and there are numerous events planned around the Pioneer Valley. Greenfield’s Pride march will be this Saturday and Holyoke’s Pridefest will be June 21. Here’s a link to Pride events this month throughout Massachusetts.

Nationwide, there are at least 45 Pride marches planned in June in cities from Boston to West Hollywood. 

Unlike most of these marches, Amherst’s has had minimal expenses, and unlike Northampton’s Pride march a month ago, there will be no fee for vendors on the common. The organizers have been volunteers, the Business Improvement District paid for signs, and the Town of Amherst has supported the march (this link includes a registration form).

Philip Avila, the assistant director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, said the DEI Department has spent money from its budget (approved by the town manager) to pay for a banner reading “Amherst Pride,” portable toilets and a stage. Amherst’s public safety personnel will provide security for the march and rally.

Interest in Pride marches, which started after the Stonewall raid in New York in 1969,  has risen with the new Presidential administration. The ACLU is tracking 588 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills.

The Amherst march and rally came together quickly. One day in April, Domb was visiting the Survival Center, where she used to be executive director, and was talking to a group that included Lisa Solowiej, the volunteer and outreach manager, and Jan Eidelson, former chair of the Center’s board of directors. They brainstormed how they could make a Pride march and rally happen, and decided to contact Avila, the former Survival Center chef, at the DEI office.

“It’s quite amazing that it went from idea to event in a blink,” Domb says. “And it shows not only the community’s support for the idea, but our collective commitment to inclusion, acceptance, and the rights of our residents. I’m grateful that the town immediately endorsed the idea, and to the small group of volunteers who are leading this effort.”

Solowiej, who has trans nephews, has handled outreach. She says the march will be both celebratory and political. “The very act of celebrating queer people’s identity and their right to be themselves has always been political,” she says. “Walking down the street with joy is political in itself.”

Eidelson, who is part of the organizing committee, says the march and rally “will celebrate love and honor the struggle and give people a chance to be proudly visible, and to fight back. We’re not going away. We are fighting back against the current administration that wants to erase us.”

Groups planning to march on June 22 include First Congregational Church’s Open and Affirming Ministry Team, Jewish Community of Amherst, Amherst Survival Center, League of Women Voters, Jones Library, Amherst Rainbow Coffee Hour (meeting today at 10:00 am at the Bangs Center), Cooley Dickinson Hospital and Valley Families for Palestine.

Groups setting up booths on the common include the UMass Stonewall Center, Translate Gender, the Toy Box, Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund, Better Together Dog Rescue, Dragonlight Designs, My Health Matters Fitness, Safe Passage, Water Dragon Publishing, and Amherst College Queer Resource Center.

Nick Grabbe, co-founder of The Amherst Current, was a newspaper editor and writer based in Amherst for 32 years.