Thankless Task

The Pride Committee is disorganized and in debt -- is it time to hire a year-round director?

by Neil Miller

The 1998 Pride celebrations are just six weeks away, and the Boston Pride Committee is in the midst of one of its weekly Tuesday night meetings. In the Wainwright Bank conference room, much of the discussion centers on nuts and bolts: permits and Porta Potties and food vendors; problems with a South End neighborhood group; the tennis tournament that Boston magazine is sponsoring. A representative from the Freedom Trail marching band puts in an appearance; a student at Wellesley College, looking smart in a World Cup baseball cap, wants to volunteer. Someone makes the mistake of asking about contingency plans in case of rain. "Rain? Rain!" exclaims Pride co-chair Sabrina Taylor, in mock horror. Rain is a subject that is never to be mentioned at a Pride Committee meeting. It is a little like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

Traditionally, the job of managing the annual parade, festival, and weeklong series of June events has fallen on the Pride Committee. But it's a big job that's getting bigger every year. Last year, Pride drew 225,000 people, the largest crowd in its history. Making Pride happen requires a "bare minimum" of $125,000 a year, according to Taylor. Yet the Pride Committee, incorporated in 1993 as a nonprofit 501c3 organization under the name Pride Inc., has never had a paid executive director and is dependent on a volunteer base that changes from year to year. The drawbacks of the all-volunteer approach came into sharp relief this year when it was revealed that Pride Inc. is saddled with a large debt from 1997.

Meanwhile, the rationale for the June celebration itself is coming under increased scrutiny. On the one hand, Pride is criticized by old-time activists as having lost some of its political emphasis; on the other, a recent Bay Windows article by Boston attorney Jim Gilbert lambasted Pride as "our annual self-imposed circus" and asked, "Do we really need a gay pride parade anymore?" Most gay and lesbian Bostonians would probably still answer that question with a firm "yes." But as Boston Pride reaches the late 1990s, its identity is less clear than in the past. Is Pride a political statement? A celebration? Is it about civil rights? About sexual freedom? About family? Or just about fun?

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Recently, the Pride Committee itself has gone through some major changes. For 10 years, it was essentially the province of Jim Kratoville, who raised the money and selected the parade marshals, speakers, and performers. Then, in October 1995, 11 members of the committee signed a letter that demanded Kratoville's resignation, charging him with a series of misdeeds that ranged from sexism to petty corruption. Kratoville departed. Taylor, one of the "reformers," became co-chair in 1996. This year she is joined as co-chair by Eric Pliner, who, while still an undergraduate at Tufts University, served as one of Pride's media coordinators in 1996 and as its political liaison in 1997. (Taylor and Pliner both have day jobs: she is the director of public policy and communications at the Fenway Community Health Center, while he works for the Massachusetts Department of Education's Safe Schools program.)

Since the departure of the old regime, the new committee has made a priority of reaching out to the community -- holding a series of open meetings and expanding youth- and women-oriented events. Recent Pride activities have included a youth dance, a dance for women of all colors, and, for the first time, a harbor cruise for the "sober community." This year, the committee is planning another youth dance and a youth cruise, as well. "We believe that we answer to the community," says Pliner. "One of our biggest challenges is responding to the needs of so many different people."

In the reformers' first year, however, their achievements were overshadowed by two controversies: "Bedgate," as Taylor refers to it -- a parade float carrying a bed on which two women simulated oral sex -- and the appearance in the parade of a man on stilts who exposed himself. City officials, and many in the gay community, were outraged. Last year came FBI reports that serial killer Andrew Cunanan might be planning to show up at Boston Pride. (Taylor says that the FBI wanted her to put Cunanan's photo up on a video screen during the Pride rally; she declined to do so.) And this year, so far, the committee's bright dreams have been hobbled by finances, delaying efforts to publicize Pride.

Although in 1996 -- the first year of the post-Kratoville era -- Pride finished with a $2500 surplus, the organization wound up with close to a $20,000 shortfall last year, according to Taylor. She attributes financial problems in part to unseasonably cold weather during Pride 1997.

T-shirt sales were down, and Boston Harbor cruises -- traditionally Pride's number-one fundraiser -- were a bust. The men's cruise barely broke even, and the women's cruise lost money -- in part because of competition from an Indigo Girls concert at Great Woods. But the biggest money-loser was the "sober cruise." That cruise was fully staffed and catered but was attended by exactly 12 people. It was an example of the committee's trying to respond to what it believed were community needs and paying the price -- literally.

There were other factors, too. One source told the Phoenix that the 1997 committee consistently missed deadlines for applying for permits. That resulted in extra expenses. Whatever Kratoville's faults, says this source, at least "he made the trains run on time." Then again, during Kratoville's last year at Pride, the organization was $4600 in the red.

Some of the financial problems of Pride have as much to do with the attitude of Boston's gay community as anything else. Most gays and lesbians seem to think that the June events just happen on their own. "Bostonians don't feel that they have to get behind this thing in advance, financially," says activist Mark McGrath. "It is not the committee's fault that people in this city don't do anything before Pride except pick out outfits." Taylor notes that every year at the Pride Day rally, volunteers fan out through the crowd with buckets asking for donations of "a buck for Pride." And every year, she says, they take in around $800. If just half of the 225,000 people in attendance last year gave a dollar, that would have paid nearly all of Pride's expenses.

For his part, Pliner suspects that one of the reasons Pride has trouble raising money is because it is viewed as "that big party." But it is "more than just a big party," he insists. "It is the single largest visibility that our community has."

While other Pride organizations around the country have taken sponsorship money from liquor companies, Boston Pride has steadfastly refused to do so. This year, however, in a break with the past, the committee is accepting such money for fundraising events catering to the 21-and-older crowd, such as the dance and the men's and women's boat cruises. Pliner attributes this decision to Pride's "dire financial situation." (This does not extend to the parade or the festival -- "There will be no `Absolut presents Boston Pride,' " says Taylor.) The long-standing policy against taking money from liquor companies was something the committee was very proud of, Pliner says, and the shift was "a tough decision." Once Pride's finances are back on track, he hopes to revert to the old policy.

Whatever the ins and outs of the current financial situation, the overwhelming organizational tasks of Pride make some argue that the time has arrived for the committee -- and the community -- to think seriously about hiring a year-round, paid executive director. Gregg Fraker, who, along with Taylor, co-chaired 1996 Pride, notes that the amount of work required to run the organization is "phenomenal." During his tenure, he says, "I literally had lunch meetings every day, meetings in the evening three times a week, plus phone calling and fundraising." To do the job "properly," Fraker argues, a paid executive director is essential. Pliner likes the idea, too. If someone were hired to coordinate the committee's day-to-day tasks, things could run more smoothly, he contends, "freeing up the job of the committee" and ensuring that the whole experience would not be so "draining." "There are things that the co-chairs can't do because we are at our regular jobs from 9 to 5," he points out.

Fraker isn't optimistic that this will happen, though, at least not in the short run. "There is an awful lot of resistance," he says. "People want to hear that you are totally volunteer-driven." Much of this resistance comes from the older, "more political" generation, he contends. As his own generation "moves up," Fraker, who is 36, hopes this attitude will shift. Given that the event now draws more than 200,000 people, an all-volunteer organization just "isn't realistic anymore."

Beyond the issues of money and professionalization, there remains the larger question -- what is Pride all about? As in other cities, Pride in Boston started as a political march back in the early 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall. In recent years, it has shed some of that political focus -- eliminating politically oriented keynote speakers and changing the parade route to go through the South End, instead of a more "public" route past City Hall and the State House. (To its credit, the current committee has attempted to bring back some political focus -- naming two "trans-people" among this year's six grand marshals, for example.) Fraker attributes the downplaying of politics in part to Pride's incorporation as a 501c3 organization; during his tenure, some committee members were fearful that expressions of political views might endanger the new nonprofit status, he says. But it also has to do with the increased comfort -- some might say complacency -- of Boston's gay and lesbian population. "As we become more recognized as a community and have more rights, people are asking the purpose of Pride," Fraker notes. "Losing its political flavor, it has to re-identify its meaning. I don't think it has really found its identity."

Current co-chair Pliner wouldn't put it quite that way. To him, Pride is "both a celebration and a reminder of our collective history," an event where "there is a place for everyone." And he cautions, too, that Pride shouldn't be taken for granted. "Pride isn't just always going to be there," he says. To make sure that Pride continues to thrive, Boston's gay and lesbian community may have to get behind the idea of a professionally managed organization. And that's a challenge that no one has been willing to confront so far.

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Neil Miller, author of Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (Vintage Books, 1995), wrote about the search for an AIDS vaccine for the April issue.

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