Oregon Queer History Collective

Next up in our Pride History installment: A little History of the Pride Flag!

The Rainbow flag is one of the most recognized symbols in the world.

Gilbert Baker hand-stitched the first flags in 1978 at Harvey Milk’s request. He gave them eight stripes, each with a meaning. He refused to trademark it. In 2018, designer Daniel Quasar added a chevron to center trans people and Black and brown q***r community members who felt erased by the mainstream version of the symbol.

It’s Pride Momth! As mentioned in my previous post, The Burnside Bridge’s big bash missed some of important q***r history of the structure.

To start, in 1992 the Walk for Love & Justice marched across the bridge and joined Portland Pride. The walk originally started in Eugene on June 7th as an effort to “build bridges and to promote an end to oppression and hatred in all of its forms including racism, sexism, homophobia and heterosexism.”

Activist Anne Galisky proposed the plan to the Le***an Community Project, drawing on years of direct aid organizing and other social justice work.

Be sure to check out the No on 9 Remembered Project to read reflections on the walk. Photo by Linda Kliewer.

Its primary election time q***rs! We’re taking a lil peak at the 1976 Voter Guide compiled by Portland Town Council (PTC) in reflection of our political power and to get excited about casting our ballots.

PTC formed in 1974 and was a major organizer for LGBTQ+ political rights. In 1975, they conducted the largest gay lobbying effort in Oregon’s history (up to that point!).

Branches of PTC evolved into other organizations, yet we can see its inspiration in orgs like , , .center, and others.

Be sure to check out the various voter guides compiled by local activists and other resources and get that ballot in by May 19th!

Source: Portland Town Council Voters Guide, Nedra Bagley Collection.

Tonight was so special spending it with Cherríe Moraga, courtesy of PSU’s OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Office of the President, Department of Chicanx/Latinx Studies, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Sociology, Honors College, & . It was especially special to hear her thoughts on visibilty, allyship, courage, and intergenerational connections.

Cherríe Moraga is an internationally recognized poet, essayist and playwright whose professional life began in 1981 with her co-editorship of the groundbreaking feminist anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. (snippets included). Her own writings are compiled in several collections, including: A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, Loving in The War Years, The Last Generation and Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Q***r Motherhood. Moraga is the recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship for Literature and the American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award, among numerous other honors. As a dramatist, her awards include an NEA, two Fund for New American Plays Awards, and the PEN West Award. In 2017, Moraga’s most recent play, Mathematics of Love, premiered at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. In the same year, she began her tenure as a Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where with her partner, visual artist Celia Herrera Rodriguez, she instituted Las Maestras Center for Xicane Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Praxis. Her most recent memoir, Native Country of the Heart, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2019. In 2023, Haymarket Books published updated anniversary editions of Waiting in the Wings and Loving in the War Years. In 2024, Moraga became a Distinguished Professor Emerita In English, UC Santa Barbara.

PS you can get these books & more from the lovely !