Madison Pride and MAGIC Picnic was the yearly celebration of the
lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
,
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
,
bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
, and
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
(
LGBT
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
) residents of
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...
. The 2009 version of this event, was "Wisconsin Capitol Pride". In 2014, OutReach LGBT Community Center took over the major Pride celebration in Madison, WI. It remains the main Pride Parade planning organization today.
Origins
The event is an amalgamation of two LGBT events that had originally been separate, distinct events:
The Pride march and Rally were originally organized by the now defunct GALVAnize organization, an LGBT group;
The MAGIC Picnic was started by the late Rodney Scheel who owned and operated the Hotel Washington complex of night clubs (which included the establishments The Club DeWash, The New Bar, Rods, The Barbers Closet, etc.), which the community lost in a tragic fire in 1996. The picnic is traditionally held on the third weekend of July although that has been shifted in some years to avoid conflicts with other regional gay events, such as the Gay Games in 2006 when the picnic was held on the second weekend of July. The picnic is traditionally held at Brittingham Park at the junction of Park Street and West Washington Avenue in Madison.
The acronym MAGIC stands for Madison Area Gay Interim Committee and was also formed partially in response to Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign of the late 1970s/early 1980s. The MAGIC picnic was also closely associated with the local and national gay volleyball league which usually held a tournament in Madison on the same weekend as the MAGIC picnic.
On October 11, 1987, Madison residents Pam Jacobson and Tim O'Brien were separately attending the
Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
The Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C., on October 11, 1987. Its success, size, scope, and historical importance have led to it being called, "The Great Ma ...
, greatly inspired by the presence of the more than 500,000 people assembled on the national Mall. Upon returning to Madison, Jacobson explored the possibility of organizing a local march, and began searching for others to help organize the event. At the same time, O'Brien was also discussing the idea of organizing a march. Mutual friends connected O'Brien and Jacobsen, and their meeting resulted in the formation of the Madison Pride March Committee.
It was during the first committee meeting that the name GALVAnize (Gay and Lesbian Visibility Alliance) was selected. During GALVAnize's existence as a group, its goal was to increase awareness about the number of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in Madison, to work for their civil rights, and to form coalitions with other minority groups in Madison.
![GALVAnize, Madison, Wisconsin - (01)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/GALVAnize%2C_Madison%2C_Wisconsin_-_%2801%29.jpg)
GALVAnize held two major marches for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights in Madison. The first was held on May 6, 1989. The second major march occurred 2½ years later on October 5, 1991. Official attendance estimates for the first march averaged about 7500 people, and about 5000 people at the second march, on a scale roughly comparable to the number of people attending many of the record-setting Madison civil rights and anti-war related marches of the 1960s. Both of these marches were accompanied by several days of associated events, including concerts and workshops, and an exhibition of a major portion of the
NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt or AIDS Quilt, is an enormous memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece o ...
. Both events were coordinated by a central committee of approximately twenty members that met weekly or twice weekly over a period of many months, and at least a dozen standing and ad hoc committees. Everything was made possible due to the individual contributions of hundreds of volunteers, many volunteering labor equivalent to part-time or even full-time jobs.
The events served as a catalyst for dozens of positive stories about LGBT people in the local media, and an opportunity to highlight the very visible presence of dozens of LGBT-supportive communities of faith. The marches also featured the very visible support of local government officials, and a wide variety of community nonprofits and for-profit businesses, and formed the foundation for coalition-building efforts in years to come with other groups working for civil rights and social justice. In addition, the accompanying workshops were an incubator for new organizations addressing the needs of a changing community, including a workshop that laid the groundwork for the 200 plus families-strong Lesbian Parents Network and other subsequent parenting groups (such as Rainbow Families), as well as galvanizing LGBT community efforts around support of LGBT youth and associated advocacy efforts in the schools, and efforts to reach out to older LGBT adults, and other diverse LGBT communities. In a city and county that had already seen more than a decade of multiple pioneering successful openly lesbian and gay candidates for local office, the marches also had a marked positive political effect, including boosting efforts at the level of Madison Council and Dane County Board to pass legislation providing some measure of domestic partner benefits. In general, the successful organizing efforts that surrounded these initial marches also provided a positive example of what greater Madison's LGBT community members could accomplish working together—laying the groundwork for the political mobilization and coalition-building work that would eventually lead to the election, from Madison, of the nation's first openly lesbian Congresswoman.
The first march's rally featured a variety of distinguished speakers, including Madison Alderperson Ricardo Gonzalez (the nation's first openly gay Latino-American elected official), State Rep. David Clarenbach (principal author of Wisconsin's 1982 first-in-the-nation LGBT rights law), and then Dane County Supervisor
Tammy Baldwin
Tammy Suzanne Green Baldwin (born February 11, 1962) is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Wisconsin since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, she served three terms in the Wisconsin Stat ...
. Baldwin would later make state history in 1992 as Wisconsin's first openly lesbian/gay member of the state legislature, and then national history in 1998 as the first successful non-incumbent openly gay or lesbian candidate for the U.S. Congress. The second march's rally included a keynote speech by
Urvashi Vaid
Urvashi ( sa, उर्वशी, Urvaśī}) is the most prominent apsara (celestial nymph) in Hindu mythology, considered to be the most beautiful of all the apsaras, and an expert dancer. She is mentioned in both ''Vedic'' and ''Puranic'' scr ...
, then director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
While each of these major marches in 1989 and 1991 was judged to be extremely successful by most measures, the human and financial resources necessary to continue to produce an ongoing series of events on this scale proved to be prohibitive (which also explains, in part, why the second major march occurred over 2 years after the first). LGBT community leaders believed that an annual event, planned on a more manageable scale, and in collaboration with groups producing longstanding existing LGBT-focused summer events, such as the MAGIC Picnic, would be more sustainable and desirable. While many Pride celebrations nationwide occur during the last weekend in June, in order to coincide with the annual observance of the anniversary of the historic
Stonewall Rebellion
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the LGBT community#Terminology, gay community in response to a police raid that began in t ...
, Madison organizers decided not to compete with popular celebrations occurring nearby in Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul on that same weekend, and decided to hold Madison's pride celebration several weeks later.
Following that, the March evolved into a more traditional
pride parade
A pride parade (also known as pride march, pride event, or pride festival) is an outdoor event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture, queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, LGBT rights by country o ...
and was consolidated into the Pride Weekend in 2002. Pride Weekend traditionally consists of the Madison LGBT community center OutReach's annual dinner on Friday (in which community leaders and allies receive recognition for their work),
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...
GLBT Alumni breakfast on Saturday or Sunday morning (which also includes a ceremony recognizing distinguished LGBT alumni), the MAGIC picnic on Saturday afternoon, followed by the Pride Parade on Sunday morning and a repeat of the picnic on Sunday afternoon. 2008 was the last Madison Pride and Magic Picnic related event.
Successor Organizations
Madison's 2009 celebration was called "Wisconsin Capitol Pride," and occurred on Saturday, August 15, and Sunday, August 16, 2009. In the 20th anniversary year of PRIDE, their pride committee honored the contributions of the founders of Madison's first major march in 1989 (described above), by asking them to serve as parade marshals. 2009's PRIDE took place on the
Alliant Energy Center
Alliant Energy Center (formerly Dane County Coliseum) is a multi-building complex located in unincorporated Madison, Wisconsin. It comprises of greenspace and includes the Exhibition Hall, the 10,000-seat Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the Willow ...
's Willow Island. 2013 saw the end of this organization.
In 2010, nightclub Plan B (and successor club Prism) created a festival for the community that runs in July during national Pride month that has a focus on music. Fruit Fest continues to this day.
In late 2013,
OutReach LGBT Community Center gathered together with other LGBT Social Groups and Businesses in Madison, WI to help the PRIDE celebration once more become a strong event for the community. On August 10, 2014, the very first OutReach Pride Parade made its way down Willimason St, up to the Capitol Square and culminating in a rally and music. The event once more took shape in 2015 on August 9, 2015, this time returning the PRIDE parade route to State St in Madison. The Pride parade returned on August 21, 2016 when OutReach once more hosted the Annual Pride Parade in Madison! 2017 and 2018 were the last two years of the OutReach Pride Parade. Each year bigger than the last.
In 2019, due to ongoing conflicts in the city for various reasons, the Pride Parade was discontinued for 2019. The Magic Picnic was resurrected as a festival and the first ever OutReach Magic Festival: A Pride Celebration was held on August 18th, 2019 to a crowd of over 3,000 at Warner Park. OutReach plans to continue this model in the future. The parade is not a concept that is completely finished, but its future is in the air for the moment. OutReach remains the main successor to the Magic Picnic and Madison Pride orgs.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Madison Pride And Magic Picnic
LGBT events in Wisconsin
Culture of Madison, Wisconsin
Festivals in Wisconsin
Annual events in Wisconsin
Festivals established in 1989