KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The an­nu­al Pride Pa­rade wound through the streets of St Clair and Wood­brookyes­d­ter­day, car­ry­ing a mes­sage of vis­i­bil­i­ty, in­clu­sion and re­mem­brance as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ty marked the close of Pride Month un­der the theme, “One Jour­ney, Many Sto­ries.”

The event ho­n­oured pi­o­neers of the lo­cal LGBTQIA+ rights move­ment, cel­e­brat­ed le­gal mile­stones and recog­nised those who are still un­able to live open­ly be­cause of fear or dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing be­fore the pa­rade be­gan, PrideTT di­rec­tor Tra­cy Shep­pard said Pride re­mained cen­tred on en­sur­ing that every mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty was seen and ac­knowl­edged.

“We must nev­er for­get why Pride ex­ists. Pride is about vis­i­bil­i­ty,” she said.

Shep­pard al­so reached out to those who were not yet ready to pub­licly em­brace their iden­ti­ty.

“To the per­son watch­ing this pa­rade who isn’t ready to step in­to it, and to the young per­son who hasn’t told their fam­i­ly or who is still fig­ur­ing out who they are, who cel­e­brates Pride qui­et­ly, you be­long to this com­mu­ni­ty too,” she said.

“You don’t have to car­ry a flag to be­long. You don’t have to march to­day to be­long.”

Shep­pard re­flect­ed on the on­go­ing le­gal bat­tle led by LGBTQIA+ ac­tivist Ja­son Jones, whose con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s colo­nial-era bug­gery law is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil in Lon­don.

Jones suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged the law in the High Court in 2018, ar­gu­ing that it breached his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pri­va­cy and equal­i­ty. How­ev­er, the Court of Ap­peal over­turned that de­ci­sion last year fol­low­ing an ap­peal by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The Privy Coun­cil heard Jones’ fi­nal ap­peal last month, with a de­ci­sion ex­pect­ed with­in the com­ing months.

“Nine years of le­gal bat­tles, nine years of con­ver­sa­tions, nine years of our com­mu­ni­ty watch­ing and hop­ing and fight­ing and re­fus­ing to dis­ap­pear,” Shep­pard said.

“Ja­son’s case changed the con­ver­sa­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It demon­strat­ed some­thing in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant—that our rights are worth fight­ing for.”

She said the push for equal­i­ty had been shaped by the con­tri­bu­tions of ear­li­er ac­tivists, in­clud­ing the late Col­in Robin­son and Brandy Ro­driguez.

Shep­pard al­so re­flect­ed on her own jour­ney in­to ad­vo­ca­cy, which be­gan while she cared for her dy­ing fa­ther dur­ing the AIDS cri­sis.

The cer­e­mo­ny al­so in­clud­ed a trib­ute to mem­bers of the LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ty who have died, with spe­cial recog­ni­tion giv­en to Ko­by Daniel Thomas.

Thomas, known by friends as Ko­by or Dano, was one of PrideTT’s most ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers. He was found dead with a sin­gle gun­shot wound to the back of his neck near a track­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­aguara­mas last month.

“For Ko­by, that is one sto­ry that weighs par­tic­u­lar­ly heavy on my heart to­day,” Shep­pard said.

“Ko­by was one of those peo­ple who, when we said vol­un­teer, Ko­by reached first.”

She de­scribed Thomas as some­one who wel­comed peo­ple with hugs and a smile, adding that this year’s pa­rade would “feel very dif­fer­ent” with­out him.

“There should have been an­oth­er greet­ing and an­oth­er laugh and an­oth­er sto­ry,” she said.

Par­tic­i­pants were then asked to ob­serve a mo­ment of si­lence in ho­n­our of Thomas and oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who had died.

As they marched through the streets, par­tic­i­pants were en­cour­aged to “be loud, take up space and be proud” while cel­e­brat­ing iden­ti­ty, re­silience and the con­tin­u­ing fight for equal­i­ty.