Hi! This is a message for Pride organizers. If you’re not a Pride organizer in some capacity, you can still stay. Because you may be able to pass this message along to someone who is. Okay, here goes: If you want the older teen gays, queer neurodivergents, and disabled nonbinary people at Pride next summer, you need to start planning for them now.

Because accessibility does not begin when the gates open. It begins in the planning meeting. And this is where a lot of events get themselves into trouble. They start with the stage, the vendors, the entertainment, the sponsors, the parade route, the drag lineup … And then somewhere around May somebody goes, “Oh shit. What are we doing for disabled people?”

Besties. That is not accessibility. That is fucking TRIAGE. If your Pride committee waits until May to ask whether disabled families can access the event, you aren’t planning accessibility. You’re troubleshooting for the wheelchair users who will eventually file a complaint because they couldn’t watch the Kehlani performance they paid to see. And their families notice the difference.

Can somebody using a wheelchair actually move through the venue? Is there seating? Is there shade? Are the bathrooms accessible? Is there a sensory space that is actually quiet, or did somebody put a folding chair behind the DJ tent and call it inclusion? Can a neurodivergent kid participate without having to endure the loudest possible version of Pride? Are schedules clear? Are there visual guides? Are captions available? Can families find transportation information before they arrive? Is there a youth or family area? Is security trained to understand disabled and neurodivergent people instead of treating regulation, communication differences, or distress like suspicious behavior? Oh! And here’s a big one: ARE DISABLED AND NEURODIVERGENT QUEER PEOPLE ACTUALLY ON THE FUCKING PLANNING COMMITTEE? Because accessibility gets real expensive and real clumsy when everybody designing it is guessing.

Pride is supposed to be about belonging. But belonging should not require endurance. A kid should not have to make it through six hours of heat, noise, crowds, inaccessible bathrooms, nowhere to sit, and no quiet space just to prove they deserve to be there. And a parent should not have to spend the entire event doing logistical combat because accessibility was treated like an add-on.

If you want families to come back next year, make it possible for them to participate THIS year. And if you are planning Pride right now? Invite disabled people in before the decisions are made. Not after. Because the best time to solve an access problem is before somebody has to encounter it with their own body.

That’s all for now. For more, please visit rainbowrootsmedia.com. And don’t forget to take good care of yourself today.