Petaluma Pride's new community initiatives
Introducing our community initiatives as we build a Petaluma Pride that seeks liberation for queer, trans, and gender expansive people, especially the multiply marginalized.
To Our Amazing Community:
We’re excited to open the next chapter of Petaluma Pride with you: today we unveil our new community initiatives! We’re also pleased to share that we’ve been hard at work rebuilding and have expanded our board from 3 to 7 members – and we’re still recruiting.
The people of Petaluma deserve a Petaluma Pride that rises to the challenge of seeking liberation for queer, trans, and gender expansive people, including racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, migrants, religious minorities, working class people, and those who are impoverished. Because none of us are free until all of us are free.
Our small, multiracial, entirely queer, predominantly trans and gender expansive, and all-volunteer team has been hard at work, incorporating what we have learned over the last few years.
We are laying the foundation for an organization that is more sustainable, robust, resilient, and representative. And, through our community initiatives, we look forward to learning from you. We want to ensure that Petaluma Pride as a nonprofit is a vehicle that actually meets your needs and reflects the hopes and dreams of everyone in the community.
Our new community initiatives include:
A city-wide festival around the main event at the fairgrounds, featuring satellite events run by an array of individuals, businesses, and community organizations,
Recurring town halls to bring community input more directly into shaping Petaluma Pride,
A community survey to better understand the community, its needs, and how to best work with each other,
An ambassador program to help build a pipeline of new community and organizational leaders,
And volunteer working groups for Events, Communications, Fundraising, Social Justice, and more!
We’re also accepting proposals for special activities to be held on-site alongside our festival, and we’d particularly love to see proposals such as skill shares, training, clothing swaps, and other forms of mutual aid.
Our community initiatives will feature prominently at our annual festival on National Coming Out Day, Saturday, October 11, at the Petaluma Fairgrounds: petalumapride.link/2025
These are all significant undertakings, as we do them in parallel with our existing event workload and the meta work of building the organization, as volunteers – so they will take time to operationalize. But we’re serious about rising to meet the moment, and together with you, dear community, we can accomplish anything!
In Community,
The Petaluma Pride Board of Directors
Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram to stay tuned for more information about how to get involved. And as always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hello@petalumapride.org.