24th Annual Black Pride Celebration

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to join me in celebrating the 24th annual DC Black Pride celebration Washington, D.C. on May 22-25, 2015.

DC Black Pride 2015 is a multi-day festival featuring a reception, films, a poetry slam, a church service, educational workshops, community town hall meetings, a basketball tournament, awards ceremony, and a health and wellness expo, among other events. We in the District of Columbia are pleased and proud that the DC Black Pride celebration is widely considered to be one of the world's preeminent Black Pride celebrations, drawing more than 30,000 people to the nation's capital from across the United States as well as from Canada, the Caribbean, South Africa, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
As the very first Black Pride festival, DC Black Pride fostered the beginning of the Center for Black Equity (formerly known as the International Federation of Black Prides, Inc. (IFBP)) and the ``Black Pride Movement,'' which now consists of 40 Black Prides on four continents. The Center For Black Equity, the celebration's organizing body, chose ``DC Black Pride 2015: 25! Inspiring a Movement, The Mission Continues'' as the theme for this year's celebration. This theme reflects the 25 years of connectedness of the Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community and its commitment to fulfilling the mission of DC Black Pride, which is to increase awareness of and pride in the diversity of the African American LGBT community. Moreover, the theme expresses the resolve of the African-American LGBT community and its allies to come together to: fight for LGBT equality; celebrate our heritage and culture as members of both the Black and LGBT communities; and promote health and wellness for the community.

DC Black Pride is a project of the Center For Black Equity and is coordinated by Earl D. Fowlkes, Jr. and Kenya Anthony Hutton with assistance from a volunteer Advisory Board, which coordinates this annual event and consists of: Andrea Woody-Macko; Genise Chambers-Woods; Re'ginald Shaw-Richardson; Joseph F. Young; Cedric Harmon; Jeffrey Richardson; Angela Peoples; Thomas King; C. Hawkins; and Sonya Hemphill as well as scores of volunteers.

I ask the House of Representatives to join me in welcoming all attending the 25th annual DC Black Pride celebration in Washington, D.C., and I take this opportunity to remind the celebrants that the American citizens who reside in Washington, D.C. are taxed without full voting representation in Congress.

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