By Cristal Gomez
Adelante First Year Experience Program will host Pride Week on April 23 to April 26.
This will be the first Pride Week not only in East Los Angeles College, but in the entire Los Angeles Community College District. The event will feature various campus-wide events to bring awareness of the LGBTQ+ community.
Throughout the week there will be keynote speakers for each event. Some keynote speakers include Drian Juarez. Juarez works with Grinder for Equality. She is a transwoman who does activism for the LGBTQ+ community. She will be talking about her experience of coming out as a transwoman and what she had to overcome. Juarez will be the speaker for the Trans Awareness Luncheon on Wednesday.
On Monday, the first day of the event, there will be a resource fair and a panel on coming out.
“Different resources from the LGBTQ+ community will be there, such as LGBTQ+ Center, Mi Centro which is located in Boyle Heights. We will have an ice cream social with Carmen Carrea who was on RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Joe Gamma said.
The following day will have a Joteria Playing with Pride workshop and keynote speaker Antonia Castellanos. Castellanos created Joteria as a combination of both Loteria and terms used within the LGBTQ+ community. After the workshop, there will be a film screening of “Milk” by director Gus Van Sant.
“Pride Week is open to all no matter how you identify yourself. This is the first ever Pride Week. I hope it will be a big hit so the community can be represented further and continue to happen every year,” Gamma said.
All events for Pride Week will be held in F5-201 the Multipurpose Room.