LGBTQIA+Allies in Glendale, California
glendaleOUT is Glendale’s grass-roots LGBTQIA+ organization. Our goal is to be part of the broader narrative that is Glendale. We do this through political action, community building, and social connection.
Though we were unable to realize Glendale’s first festival-style Pride event, and don’t expect to be able to do so before 2022, we continue to meet, build, plan, strategize, and move Glendale’s LGBTQIA+ narrative forward. We participate, we event, we petition, we zine, we protest, we video, we support and volunteer, and we had that Zoom pajama party that one time.
Glendale Arts is celebrating the Season with a Holiday Bar Crawl and Open House!
...and proceeds benefit glendaleOUT!
Because glendaleOUT is a grass-roots organization, we aren't able to accept corporate donations. As part of WHAT THEY DO, Glendale Arts stepped up and got our backs by becoming our fiscal sponsors. This was our first official community relationship, one that has continued beyond red tape and paperwork. Because of this relationship, glendaleOUT was able to accept a donation from Supervisor Kathryn Barger's office, a donation that will be our 2022 Glendale Unified School District Scholarship award. It assures a second year that we will be able to award a graduating GUSD Senior a scholarship that recognizes them not only for their grades and activities, but also specific efforts that positively contribute to their LGBTQIA+ community. Meaning: the queer kids are getting the money specifically for their queerness!
Additionally, Glendale Arts, of their own accord, acknowledged glendaleOUT and Glendale's queer community on their marquee National Coming Out Day, 2020, and again during Pride 2021. They participated in #QueeringGlendale. They also showcased our first installments into documenting #locallyQueer history by leaving our first two posters up for MANY MONTHS past June, front and center, so that everyone walking past the theater could see and read about Glendale Queer History. (Our first two installments were Mark Chatfield, Olympic swimmer from Glendale and Margaret Cho, long time Glendale resident.)
Why this matters:
Glendale politics. Since 2008, the non-profit Glendale Arts has been programming the historical Alex Theatre in downtown Glendale. Locally based, invested in their community, and residency to several entities - including Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles - they also provide local artists and grass-roots organizations like ours a means to financially subsist.
September this year, after much stringing along, Glendale City Council re-assigned stewardship of the Alex to an external company.
Glendale Arts has since been reorganizing and re-establishing their purpose in the community of Glendale. This event, Holiday Bar Crawl and Open House, is their first event since the ruling. To benefit themselves? NO, TO BENEFIT glendaleOUT! CRAZY! And amazing, really.
Queer in Glendale is hard! Thank you Glendale Arts for all you've done for us. LET'S PARTY!
Keep Queer Loud!
