Meet the volunteers that make Spokane Pride possible

click to enlarge Meet the volunteers that make Spokane Pride possible
Erick Doxey photo
Spokane Pride board member Shelby Dirks works on a display for Pride Month.

A vibrant blue T-shirt with "Pride is Power, First Pride March, 1992" printed in hot pink is carefully folded and pinned.

It's among the items inside boxes and boxes of local queer memorabilia unpacked on a recent Thursday morning by Spokane Pride board members and volunteers setting up an ongoing project called Spokane Pride & Remembrance: A History Project at Spokane Public Library's Central branch.

Just after 10 am, the once-quiet third floor bustles with activity. The exhibit's head curator and local Spokane drag queen, Crystal Marché, flits back and forth between dressing mannequins in sequined and sparkling drag queen gowns and helping arrange miniature LGBTQ+ flags inside one of the glass cases.

"This has been kind of like my legacy project," Marché says. "I believe that nobody can know where they're going unless they know where they've been."

The Pride history exhibit is just one small example of the behind-the-scenes work that makes the parade and festival possible.

What began as a march numbering around 1,000 people on June 3, 1992, has grown into one of the largest LGBTQ+ events in the Inland Northwest, predicted to draw around 50,0000 attendees on June 14.

And while the main event lasts one day, it takes more than 200 volunteers to bring it to life. They do everything from selling merch and working the bar to driving shuttles, setting up tents, managing waste, coordinating safety patrols known as "Angels," and packing it all away once the glitter and confetti settle.

THE HISTORIANS

Born in the Tri-Cities, Marché started performing drag over two decades ago at the queer Pasco nightclub Out and About before moving to Spokane in 2003 and becoming a local drag icon.

As many of Marché's drag elders of the 1960s and 1970s have recently died, recording queer history has become ever-important.

"I grew up listening to these stories of people who did this when it wasn't popular, when it was still illegal, and history has been something that I deeply love," she says. "So this is my gift to the community."

The project was born at the end of 2023, with the help of Spokane Pride, and was shown as an exhibit for the first time last year at Riverfront Park's Pavilion for a handful of days in June. This year, the exhibit moved to the Central Library, where library staff assisted by sifting through archives like old Stonewall News Northwest newspapers.

"This year, we're kind of really trying to show the intersectionality of the queer community because you're not just queer," Marché says. "You're queer and a woman, you're queer and trans, you're queer and a person of color, you're also queer and an ally."

GET INVOLVED

Visit spokanepride.org/volunteer to learn more about helping out. While Spokane Pride needs more than 200 volunteers to put on its annual parade and festival, it also needs volunteers for its 70-plus year-round events.

A volunteer at the Pride parade and festival since 2022, Hayley Olson also joined the history project team this year. With a master's in history from Eastern Washington University, Olson recognizes how important it is to keep records for marginalized communities.

"I felt it was my duty as a historian to uplift these stories, these narratives and this history in order to make it more visible," she says.

In her first two years volunteering, Olson helped mostly with volunteer coordination, but last year she took on three different shifts: coordinating volunteers, selling merch and working at the Pride bar.

"I'm bisexual and I wanted to make sure that in a community that is so close to a very conservative state that this organization had life in it and continues to have life and to provide an outlet for people to celebrate the fact that we exist and we're not going anywhere," Olson says.

The Pride history project is ongoing, and encourages community members to share their stories at spokanepride.org/historyprojecthub. The exhibit's opening ceremony was last Sunday; it'll be displayed at the Central Library throughout June.

MOTHER OF MERCH

Described as a "Jack of all trades," Spokane Pride board member Shelby Dirks has a hand in most of what keeps Spokane Pride running, but she also volunteers as its main merchandise creator and graphic designer.

Dirks got involved with Spokane Pride as a volunteer after moving back to Spokane in late 2019. She owned and operated a small nonprofit thrift store for a handful of years before selling it to become more involved in the organization, logging over 40 hours of service each week. Now, you'll find her pumping out self-designed and hand-printed tumblers, making T-shirts (including last year's Pride shirt) and designing event flyers.

Dirks notes that Spokane Pride only recently added one paid staff member, Executive Director Matthew Danielson.

"We pull off a beautiful thing," she says about Pride. "And it all comes from people wanting to do it, so it is volunteer based. Very active board members, though, we see each other way too much, don't we?"

THE MAPPER

A longtime volunteer of Spokane Pride, Jacob Beye became a board member a year ago. Though his responsibilities have changed year-to-year, this time around Beye is charged with mapping and coordinating the 220 vendors, 15 food trucks and five stages at the festival.

There will be booths of all sorts, from small businesses selling Pride and non-Pride wares like jewelry to organizations providing helpful LGBTQ+ resources and information.

"What I love about it is we don't have to beg people to be vendors," Beye says. "We just put our applications out there, make sure people know when deadlines are coming and stuff, and they just blow in."

Food, he notes, is by far the most competitive, with about 100 applicants vying for limited spots.

Outside of his role as a board member, Beye has worked for other local nonprofits like the Ronald McDonald House and was inspired by actions that boards can take.

"[Spokane Pride] is one I believe in strongly," Beye says. "It's done a lot for all the people around me and myself ... so it feels really important, and it feels like something I need to pay back because I received." ♦

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Dora Scott

Dora Scott is the Inlander’s food writer, joining the editorial team in 2024. She moved to Spokane from her hometown in Grass Valley, California, where she worked as the special sections manager at The Union newspaper. Dora graduated from Yonsei University’s Underwood International College in South Korea, where...