BANGOR, Maine — Angela Hauser and Gina Langley carried a banner in Saturday’s Bangor Pride 2016 parade they hope will hang in the Orlando nightclub where earlier this month a gunman shot more than 100 people.
The banner bore the slogan #orlandostrong, the hashtag that people used in the aftermath of the shooting to show support for the victims on social media. Hauser invited people who attended the festival after the parade to sign the banner.
Hauser, 43, of Brewer, said that she grew up in Florida and members of her family lost friends in the June 12 shooting at Pulse, a popular gay bar and dance club in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 people dead and 53 injured.
“We want to send this back to hang in Pulse to represent the support of people from Maine,” she said. “This hit close to home. It affected people that I know.”
On Saturday, Hauser and Langley, 45, who have been together for 12 years, wore T-shirts with a picture of Luis S. Vielma, a 22-year-old who was killed June 12, on them.
The parade and festival were a culmination of events that began Monday with a discussion about the concerns of prejudice within education, mental health and health care.
Twice as many people and organizations marched in the parade this year as did last year and there was not enough room in the West Market Square area for all the vendors that wanted to participate to do so, organizer Alex Patel said during the festival.
Patel, president of the Bridge Alliance, which has sponsored the event since 2007, attributed the increased participation to the shooting in Orlando and the addition of co-sponsor the Mabel Wadsworth Health Center.
“Orlando encouraged people to get out and show their pride,” she said. “We secured stronger sponsorship than in the past. I think the large turnout speaks to the fact that support for the GLBT community is on people’s hearts and minds.”
Duncan Dwyer, 42, of Bangor agreed. He attended the event with his 4-month-old daughter, Kira, and 14-month-old dog, Parker.
“In this time and place, anyone who has any connection to this community needs to come out of the woodwork and show their support,” he said.
People of all ages lined Main and State streets as the parade that included delegations from local churches and political, health and arts organizations made its way through downtown Bangor. After the parade, the festival, which included speeches, music and mingling in West Market Square, got underway.
One of this year’s biggest draws was the rainbow-colored crosswalk on State Street. Many festival goers stopped traffic as they snapped pictures of each other crossing the street. This is the first year the city has painted the crosswalk, located near where Charlie Howard, a gay man, was thrown into the Kenduskeag Stream, where he drowned in 1984.
Taryn Perry, 18, of Brewer and Nora Cary, 19, of Bangor attended the festival for the first time Saturday.
“Orlando kind of gave me the courage to come out this year,” Cary said as she and Perry stopped at the Charlie Howard Memorial off State Street, where people used colored chalk to write messages of hope and love on the sidewalk.
“Seeing so many people just like me living this close — it’s awesome,” Perry said.