“It was not a welcoming community or an accepting community to diversity, at all.” “When I first moved in the early '90s, it was a very different community,” said Traverse City Mayor Jim Carruthers. In honor of Up North Pride’s 2020 Pride Week celebrations (which, because of COVID-19, will run virtually in 2020, from June 22 through June 28), Northern Express took stock of where things stand for the LGBT community today, including how far we’ve come over the years - and how far we still have left to go. It’s an event that has become, in the six years since it began, the single largest LGBTQ+ Pride march in the state of Michigan.īut Traverse City wasn’t always known for being an open-minded and welcoming community to LGBTQ+ populations, and most other smaller towns throughout northern Michigan still don’t have that reputation. In 2019, the Up North Pride Traverse City Visibility March drew more than 6,000 attendees.
LGBTQ+ Up North: How Far Have We Come? And how far is left to go? By Craig Manning | June 20, 2020
