Salinas Valley Pride celebrates 10 years with a focus on inclusiveness.

Lisa Cisneros remembers it was August of 2007, because she had just finished law school at UC Berkeley.

The Salinas native came home to visit and heard rumblings of a Pride march in her hometown. Hundreds of people turned out to Salinas’ first-ever Pride march in Oldtown, and then-Assemblymember Anna Caballero served as the grand marshal.

“It felt very bold, and also like it was about time,” Cisneros says. “Finally someone was stepping up to the plate and putting this effort together, giving us an outlet. There are lots of LGBTQ people – and our circle of family and friends and allies who support us and have our backs – but there had never been a mass mobilization or public display of that respect and support. We got a really excellent response because people had been wanting that in Salinas but hadn’t had it. It was fantastic.”

The timing coincided well to mobilize advocates against Prop. 8, a California ballot initiative that overturned same-sex marriage. A cohort of LGBTQ+ people and their allies that had come together stuck together on policy issues in the years to come.

But beyond forming a coalition that could activate volunteers to get out the vote and do advocacy work, a new cultural era for gay life in the Salinas Valley was fomenting in the 2000s. Cisneros and others formed what became known as Salinas Valley Equality, which hosted social events like bowling nights. Then in 2009, Mariana Luna Arredondo started asking bars to host midweek gay nights. Wednesdays became a rotating gathering time for LGBTQ+ folks in the absence of a dedicated gay bar. Arredondo remembers promoting the first one, at the now-defunct Oldtown Bar & Grill, on MySpace and drawing more than 50 people. “People showed up,” she says, “and it stayed strong and it grew and we built community. There were so many queer people and I thought, ‘Where did you come from?’”

Arredondo was more interested in hosting social gatherings than political ones, and making Salinas’ gay community more visible. Aundria Abad, now on the board of Salinas Valley Pride, remembers going to gay night after she turned 21. “Even though I’d had partners, it was the first time I felt comfortable being affectionate in public,” Abad says.

The group has since gone through another evolution. Salinas Valley Pride Celebrations launched in 2009, and its early events were nighttime events with alcohol. In 2014, after her daughter was born, Arredondo stopped organizing gay night; she wanted to bring her kid with her to a family-friendly event.

Pride has de-emphasized nightlife, transitioning instead to an outdoor daytime event at Toro Park, making the annual gathering family-friendly starting in 2018.

“The organization had shifted and grown with us as we’ve grown as people,” says Jacob Agamao, who also serves on the board. As a teen, Agamao became the first president of a Gay-Straight Alliance at Everett Alvarez High School in 1999-2000; today, they work as the LGBTQ+ services coordinator for youth at the Epicenter, a nonprofit that didn’t exist when Agamao was their age.

Cisneros marched in 2007, that first year, with her domestic partner who is now her wife, a testament to progress in the years since. But on Oct. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that reminds us how much progress there is still to make – the court will rule on whether discrimination protections on the basis of sex also include gender identity and sexuality. That that’s even being questioned at this point is a reminder of how far we have yet to go.

SALINAS VALLEY PRIDE 10-YEAR CELEBRATION noon-5pm Saturday, Oct. 12, at Toro County Park, 501 Highway 68, Salinas. Free. info@salinasvalleypride.com, salinasvalleypride.com