Pride Soars In New Haven, From Mitchell Library To The New Haven Green

Top: Anne Erbe with her daughter, Nonie. Bottom: nico w. okoro, her son Nile, Joe Shortsleeve, and his daughter Mayarosa Singh. Lucy Gellman Photos.

In the program room at Mitchell Library, the rainbows seemed to be multiplying. At one table, educator Anne Erbe colored in a rainbow as her daughter, 7-year-old Nonie, pulled out a blue crayon to complete a large letter P that was blooming across the poster in front of her. At another, Edie Stoehr contemplated the smears of blue and orange in the corner of her sign, adding yellow and turquoise to the mix. Everywhere, parents and volunteers buzzed around in rainbow-printed bandanas and rainbow leis, with fabric flowers that made the room feel even brighter.

As she watched, children's librarian Sarah Quigley felt a sense of joy wash over her. She took a beat, just to savor the moment. A rectangular rainbow glowed on her cheek. Then she got back to business, taking stock of a table covered with rainbow accessories and fielding questions from pint-sized artists hard at work over their posterboards.

Wednesday, Quigley brought together dozens of parents, young children, and volunteers at the Mitchell Branch Library for its second annual Pride Parade and Festival, held in the library’s program room and outside in Westville’s Beecher Park. Held in the sunny afternoon heat, the celebration championed not just LGBTQ+ rights but the belief in a shared and joyful humanity, in which New Haven’s diversity is celebrated loudly and in vivid color.

Sara Armstrong, a resident of Edgewood and director of student services at Neighborhood Music School, came out as the parent of a queer child. 

Not even 24 hours later, that message echoed across downtown New Haven as Daniel Quasar’s Progress Pride Flag rose over the New Haven Green, a celebration of National Pride Month that has since become an annual event. As city officials joined members of A Place To Nourish Your Health (APNH), New Haven Black Pride, Anchor Health and the New Haven Pride Center, they too spoke to the need for LGBTQ+ visibility—and safety—not only in June, but all year long. More on that below.

“This feels magical,” said Quigley (photographed at left), who is better known and equally cherished as Ms. Sarah. “It feels healing. It feels like all the bad things I was worried about today and a month ago—all of that is gone.

It’s like, I see myself in these babies, and it’s how I can reach back in time, and cradle that little girl who I was, who needed to be seen, and needed to know that she’s allowed to be who she is. And that’s a beautiful thing.”

Wednesday, that soul-nourishing approach permeated every nook and cranny of the library’s small program room, as families packed it to the gills and filled it with loud, cheerful conversation. Many had come out specifically for Quigley, who leads a weekly storytime that has become, for many parents and caregivers, a beloved Tuesday morning ritual in Westville. Others heard about the parade and wanted to attend as allies and members of the queer community themselves.

Top: Robin McLaue and Terri Laue. Bottom: Elia Warshaw and their parent, Dom Warshaw, who carried a sign that read "I love my gay goth dad."

Others, still, had heard through the grapevine that someone had complained anonymously about a book that Quigley read at storytime on SeeClickFix—which is intended for potholes and broken street lights—and simply wanted to show their support. The book, Tasha Spillett’s Raven’s Ribbons, tells the story of an Indigenous little boy who wants to wear a ribbon skirt, and a grandmother who—partly in honor of those who identify as two-spirit—makes it happen, despite the newness of the request.

As she worked on a rainbow with bright, blocky bands of color and a long, soft arc, Erbe said that she was happy to be there as both a queer woman and a mom to a young kid, who is doing her best to create a kind and caring individual in a world that can feel heavy.

At home, Erbe and her wife make sure to teach Nonie that families come in all shapes and sizes. At school, though, “Nonie is one of like two kids who has two moms,” Erbe said. “Right now it’s really important to be around people who love queer people.”

“It says ‘Pride’ and I’m making it because I like my mommy and mama,” Nonie said as she drew, the beginnings of the word P-R-I-D-E materializing as she switched the blue crayon for green. As she leaned carefully over the work, she was already a vision of summer in a rainbow-striped dress and matching lei with cheery fabric flowers.

Hypatia Hughes, a third grader at Elm City Montessori School.

A few tables away, Terri Laue and their daughter, Robin McLaue, savored the chance to create in community, around people who love and support them. Laue, who works in public health, met Quigley years ago through a close friend who lived in Texas, where Quigley was a school librarian before relocating to Connecticut.

The friend, who has a trans child, also left Texas for Connecticut—and then moved to New Mexico when the landscape for gender-affirming care all but disappeared last summer. Laue, meanwhile, met Quigley and became fast friends with her. So when they heard that there would be a Pride parade for library lovers of all ages, it was a no-brainer.

“It’s scary but it’s also like really important to show up,” Laue said. “Not everyone can show up as themselves. I have two kids, and it’s important to have a future that’s inclusive for everyone.”

“And Pride is fun!” they added. “It’s a riot, and sometimes it’s also a party. It’s not all about dancing around and sometimes it is.”

Top: Edie Stoehr. Bottom: Hughes' mom Illa Hiller, who came with all her rainbow gear and a pair of large, shimmering butterfly wings. 

Stoehr, a freshman at the Sound School, inspected her handiwork just a few seats away. She said that she had come as both a voracious reader and lover of the library and somebody who currently identifies as asexual, which means she is not attracted to other people. Within the LGBTQ+ community, asexual people often feel left out.

“I feel like it’s important to me to show my pride, because we do exist,” Stoehr said. She added that she often feels like people underestimate the value of friendship, forgetting that its bonds often endure longer and reach deeper than romantic love.

Nearby, Possible Futures Founder Lauren Anderson offered up rainbow face paint to attendees, doling out dozens of hugs, as she flowed between conversations, fitted Pride flags into her hair, and got attendees ready for the parade in their rainbow best. As a member of the New Haven Free Public Library’s Board of Directors (and a fierce advocate for library funding), she was one of several volunteers to come out for the event, from Westville Community Nursery School teachers to parents of queer children who are now thriving adults.

“It’s my bounden duty to show up,” said Ann Olcott, rocking a dress printed with rainbow-patterned dinosaurs as she nodded to the code of ethics used by the Episcopal Church. She pointed to the love and care that Quigley has for the school’s tiny readers, who are just starting their journey to literacy. “Children need to be seen and heard and valued.”

Westville Community Nursery School educators Jaime Kane and Ann Olcott.

And as they headed outside to march, they were. As families made their way down the sidewalk and through the lush grass of Beecher Park, dozens of rainbows stretched across the space, turning it into a celebration of Pride that also felt like a bright, impromptu after-school party at the cusp of summer. As her father, Xiao Jian, bounced her young son in his arms, Westvillian Andong Peng said she was there “for my son,” who loves attending the storytimes with Quigley.

Neighbors Joe Shortsleeve and nico okoro added that showing up—for Pride, and also for the incomparable Ms. Sarah—was not even a question in their minds. Both of them have young children who are growing up in the library, and who adore Quigley. Both have experienced the magic of Mitchell storytime, which begins with welcome songs in English and American Sign Language, and ends in a luminescent curtain of bubbles.

“Maya fiercely loves Sarah,” Shortsleeve said of his young daughter. “Every time she sees Sarah, she lights up. I want her to grow up in a community where people show up for our beloveds.”

That reminder of community comes in the midst of a years-long, escalating national attack on LGBTQ+ rights from which Connecticut has not been immune. This year, the American Civil Liberties Union has tracked over 500 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in state legislatures across the country, from restrictions and bans on gender-affirming care to new censorship efforts aimed at public education.

Meanwhile, attacks on LGBTQ+ and especially transgender people have also skyrocketed at the federal level, through both anti-LGBTQ executive orders and the courts. Connecticut has seen and felt the aftershocks of those decisions: last year, both Connecticut Children’s Hospital and Yale New Haven Hospital cut gender-affirming care programs for youth, leaving hundreds of young people suddenly in limbo.

In Connecticut’s libraries, that attack has looked like challenges and proposed book bans to multiple titles—including Mike Curato's Flamer, and Craig Thompson’s Blankets—in towns and cities including Newtown and Wallingford. Despite legislation that strengthened protections for librarians last year, those challenges are still coming: in 2025, Connecticut received at least three known challenges to books, according to data from the American Library Association.

“You see this, and it makes me feel like everything is worth it,” said an undeterred Quigley Wednesday. “All of the struggle, all of the hurt, all of the fear—it’s worth it. Because we get to let these kids know that we will keep them safe. They’re safe here.”

“Pride Is The Opposite Of Shame”

Chris Cole: Visibility, in June and all year long, is critical. 

Thursday afternoon, that message made its way downtown, as city officials, Alder Frankie Redente, and representatives of APNH, Anchor Health CT, and the New Haven Pride Center gathered to celebrate the raising of the Pride Flag over the New Haven Green.

It doubled as a preview of New Haven Black Pride, which in its seventh year has expanded to a full week of events in New Haven and West Haven. This year, events have included an open mic night, vogue night, drag bingo and impersonation drag show, as well as the weekend’s signature visibility kiki ball and annual festival. View a full schedule of events here.

“It’s visibility in a world that often asks us to shrink,” said Tim Mack, director of prevention services at APNH and the founder and primary organizer of Black Pride. “We are still rising, we are still here, and we are still celebrating.”

That message feels especially urgent right now, he and others added. Chris Cole, who lives in Watertown and has led APNH since 2008, remembered receiving an eight-page letter from a young person in his neighborhood during the Covid-19 pandemic, thanking him for flying a Pride flag outside of his house.

Top: Tim Mack beside Cole. Bottom: Jovanni Cabanas and Laura Boccodoro, who work for APNH. Boccodoro was instrumental in encouraging the city to do the flag raising, her colleagues said at the event. 

The neighbor, a girl who was just on the cusp of adulthood at the time, explained how much it meant to her to have a symbol of LGBTQ+ visibility in the town. Even in times that can feel dark, “that has given me hope,” Cole said. Years later, he’s hoping to harness and nourish that same kind of visibility—and gratitude practice—not only during June, but every day.

“Pride seems very muted this year,” he said, adding that he’d attended the Hartford Yard Goats’ Pride Night, and been disappointed by how subdued it felt. “Both in reality and in our minds, this [the flag raising] is important because it expands our minds. It saves lives.”

“Within all the ignorance and the craziness, we have to make sure we spread more love,” chimed in Jovanni Cabanas, safe space coordinator at APNH whose alter ego is Queen Xiomara LaBeija, from the legendary House of LaBeija. Like Cole, Cabanas has observed the need for a bigger tent within the LGBTQ+ community, particularly when it comes to including Black, Latine, and trans and nonbinary voices.

Chris Freimuth, a board member at the New Haven Pride Center, took a moment to talk about "Project Phoenix," an emergency $500,000 fundraising campaign that allowed the Pride Center to announce and celebrate its reopening earlier this month. Read more about that in previous coverage from the Arts Paper. 

As an Afro-Boricua who is also queer, they live that reality. For them, a large part of that is APNH’s now-annual visibility ball, scheduled for Friday evening at the Building Complex in West Haven. Cabanas said they are especially excited about the venue, which is new to the ball this year, because it is co-owned by a queer, Latina artist who understands the importance of Pride firsthand.

Redente, who represents Fair Haven’s Ward 15 on the Board of Alders and is himself gay, echoed that need for more love in the world. When he sees the flag flapping over the Green, it’s a reminder of LGBTQ+ rights in the heart of the city. As Mayor Justin Elicker noted during the press conference, this month marks the second time this year that the city has raised the flag over the Green: the first took place in February, when the Trump Administration ordered the flag to be lowered at the Stonewall Monument in New York City.

The Progress Pride Flag, designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018, features Gilbert Baker’s original 1978 design (six thick, geometric bands of rainbow color), with a nesting doll of black, brown, blue, pink and white triangles in the lefthand corner. Those colors are meant to recognize members of the Black, Brown, and Trans communities who have too often been left out of, or erased from, mainstream, whitewashed conversations around LGBTQ+ visibility. 

“It’s a shield,” Redente said. “It’s a solemn promise that rings from the Green to every corner of our city that you are seen, you are safe, and you belong here.”

As he watched from the Green, keeping himself cool with a large, bright fan for New Haven Black Pride, Atiba DeCruise said he was excited for the weekend’s festivities—and to see the flag back up over the Green. An HIV tester at APNH, he drives the organization’s mobile testing unit—and advocates for both HIV prevention and awareness everywhere he goes.

Many years ago, DeCruise remembered, he dated someone with HIV, and saw how “it kind of destroyed them emotionally.” He doesn’t want that for other people living with HIV, particularly as treatments like Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) become widely available, including in biannual injection form.

“I think with my work, it’s important to be seen because we have to educate people,”