New High Visibility Events For 2013 Pride Weekend: Inaugural Long Beach Dyke March, Blue Party and Historic Pride Bike Ride; LBREPORT.com To Webcast Friday Night March LIVE

(May 15, 2013, 7:55 a.m.) -- The Long Beach Lesbian community will significantly increase its visibility during this year's 30th annual Long Beach Pride weekend with an inaugural Blue Party and LGBTQ Historic Pride Bike Ride tied to the first Long Beach Dyke March [official term] on Friday May 17, 2013.

As part of our extended coverage of events during Pride week, LBREPORT.com will webcast the March LIVE with VIDEO on-demand thereafter, making the Long Beach event accessible throughout California and beyond.

The Long Beach Dyke March has been organized by the Long Beach-based Artful Thinking Organization, a nonprofit dedicated to programs raising awareness for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and Breast Cancer. An organizing flier (click to enlarge) states, "This is not a protest march. We have the right to Rally and Celebrate all that is female. Join us to support the end of discrimination and violence against women and to promote equal access to healthcare, equal pay, reproductive rights, military equality and same sex rights."

The March will start at Bixby Park (Broadway at Junipero Ave.) at 6:30 p.m. on Friday May 17 and travel west along the Broadway corridor through the gay business district, ending at the corner of Broadway and Alamitos Ave.

The Dyke March will include as its featured speaker Ms. Robin Tyler, sometimes called the Rosa Parks of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. Ms. Tyler was among the prevailing plaintiffs in the landmark CA Supreme Court case of Tyler et. al vs. County of Los Angeles that legalized same-sex marriages in CA in 2008 (prior to voter-enacted Proposition 8 which banned them; a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 is expected in the coming weeks).

Biking to the March will be riders in what's being called the Historic LGBQT Pride Bike Ride, organized by EcoDykes, which will roll down Broadway from Cherry Ave.

The official "after-party" for the Dyke March will take place at the Long Beach ArtExchange, 356 E 3rd Street, beginning at 9 p.m. To contrast with a simultaneously scheduled downtown "Pink Party" (now in its 6th year), the Dyke March has dubbed its after-party the "Blue Party." (The Blue Party was in the process of being planned before converting to the "official party" of the March).

The Blue Party will feature well-known Los Angeles "She-jay" TLa Storm spinning Hip Hop and R&B music mixes.

Art too will play a big part in the Blue Party with the current gallery exhibit called Progressive Views on Gender and Sexuality open to the "after-party" participants. The exhibit showcases the themes of vulnerability, stereotypes, sexual identity and social pressures in painting and sculpture.

In addition local artists and guest will be painting during the party creating a "live art show" and LGBTQ artwork will be available for purchase through a silent auction.

Admission to the official 9 p.m. after-party/fund raiser is $25 (tax deductible) with a $5 discount for anyone wearing blue (excluding blue jeans). The admission price includes food and drink refreshments. Organizers say the money raised will be used to purchase equipment to begin a Long Beach film series called Queer Women of Color modeled on the "Sistah Sinema" events that went nation-wide after beginning in Seattle in 2011.

In an exclusive interview with LBREPORT.com, ArtExchange CEO Nicolassa Galvez and ArtExchange Volunteer Carolyn Wysinger said an ArtExchange fundraiser party was being planned when the Dyke March came to their attention. ArtExchange personnel contacted the Dyke March organizers and the ArtExchange event became the official "after-party" of the Dyke March. Ms. Galvez told LBREPORT.com that organizers of the Pink Party had been "very supportive" of the ArtExchange's "after-party" plans.

The Long Beach Dyke March joins a long list of formal and renegade Dyke marches and protests that have long traditions in large metropolitan areas across North America. The protest marches are traditionally held on the Friday or Saturday of the local Pride Weekend to highlight women's interests and lesbian visibility.

The first two documented "dyke" marches were in both in Canada in 1981. Two hundred marchers marched in Vancouver in May 1981 as part of a Bi-National Lesbian Conference. In October of that year in Toronto, a group called Lesbians Against the Right held a march.

In 1992 in New York City, a group called the Lesbian Avengers began as an action group to focus on issues deemed important to "lesbian survival and visibility." The organization quickly spread globally and one year later on April 24, 1993 rallied 20,000 participants to march in Washington D.C. one day before the official April 25th, 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation.

In June 1993, San Francisco and New York lesbians marched the Saturday before their cities’ official Pride Parades. The events have been held ever year since and neither protest march has ever applied for a permit.

Chicago’s Dyke Parade started in 1998 and occurs around the June 28th date of the New York City Stonewall Riots (considered the beginning of the Gay Civil Rights movement). Chicago's march had originally been held in the city’s traditional gay-friendly neighborhood of Andersonville. However, since 2008, the Dyke March organizers have rotated the parade every two years to different Chicago neighborhoods to increase visibility in other communities across the city.

In keeping with the historic tradition of the early Dyke protest marches as opposed to traditional Pride Parades, the major metropolitan Dyke marches continue to have home-made signs and little evidence of organization or corporate sponsorship; many are done without permits.