Community looks to regroup after loss of Tucson Pride

Colette Barajas's phone started blowing up Wednesday afternoon as word got out that Tucson Pride was cancelled and the organization was shuttered. 

"My phone hasn't stopped ringing since yesterday," the Tucson Realtor said Thursday afternoon. 

Organizers and stakeholders in Tucson's LGBTQ community were looking to Barajas for advice and direction on next steps.

Barajas said she didn't have much to tell them beyond the idea that something had to be done. There was too much legacy at stake, too much history to walk away from.

"I can't see Tucson being without a pride," she said, but what that will look like? "I don't know today," she said, "but this community steps up and supports when needed."

Many stakeholders said they can't imagine Tucson without a pride celebration. Tucson Pride is the oldest LGBTQ+ event in the state and one of the longest-running in the country.  

"I think there's a need for something. I don't know if it's trying to resurrect this organization, or if it's better to just let it go and start fresh," said Scott Blades, executive director of Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network who, like Barajas, has been fielding questions and suggestions since Wednesday.

"Maybe there's a way to continue the organization with an entirely new group of people, and I'm just not sure about that," he said. "But there's definitely a need ... to focus on pride and to have community events."

Neither Barajas or Blades were surprised that Tucson Pride canceled the Feb. 21 festival; it had already been rescheduled once before from October to last November, when organizers moved it again, this time to 2026. They worried that the November date conflicted with El Tour de Tucson.

But they and others in the community said they were surprised that the board of directors, newly appointed in recent weeks, decided to end the organization.

Tucson Pride held its first pride event in June 1977 at Himmel Park. It was a memorial, a rally and a protest wrapped up in grief, frustration and anger over the beating death of Richard Heakin, a Nebraska tourist attacked by four Tucson teens when he was leaving Stonewall Tavern on Speedway. The teens were tried as juveniles and received probation. 

That one-day-long event spawned one of the country's longest-running pride events. 

Which is why local activists and supporters were scrambling for answers after Wednesday's announcement.

Board members could not be reached for comment, but former pride board member Jeff Fulgham, in a statement shared with the Star, said the decision mostly came down to money.

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After a blistering heatwave in 2024 that drove attendance down, Tucson Pride recorded a $45,000 loss, according to financial documents released publicly last October.

That compounded losses from 2022, when the festival didn't serve alcohol after organizers failed to get a liquor license. The group also lost its non-profit status last year after missing the deadline to refile, Fulgham said. 

But one of the group's biggest hurdles was finding enough volunteers to put on the festival, according to Fulgham's statement.

Tucson Pride does not pay its board and has no paid staff to work the festival. It relies entirely on volunteers, which Barajas said has always been hard.

"It's no simple task to put on that event," she said, speaking from her years volunteering with Tucson Pride from its first event in 1977 to 1992. "I think most community members won't admit this, but when things are good, we all relax and nobody wants to help. And sometimes I think people don't know how to ask for help, or they do and they can't get it."

Beyond the parade and community events, Tucson Pride played a significant role in expanding LGBTQ+ rights, from lobbying the city to adopt anti-discrimination laws to creating the country's first LGBT commission, which Barajas said still exists.

Tucson also had the nation's first same-sex domestic violence program, the Wingspan Domestic Violence Program, created by activist and domestic violence survivor Lavina Tomer. Her efforts and advocacy led to state laws that give same-sex domestic violence victims the same legal rights as heterosexuals.

"There's history, there's context.(Tucson Pride) has legacy," said Southern Arizona Senior Pride Executive Director Mary O’Donoghue, whose organization advocates and provides services for seniors. "We can't start something new next year and kind of fully replace that void. However, it is in the nature of our community, as diverse as it is, to really come together, rise up, unite and support."

Barajas said the community has begun those conversations, but it might take some time.

"I think that we, as this community, have always stood up on a rock anytime somebody pushed us down, and I absolutely believe that we're going to do that," said longtime volunteer Rickey Morey-Wolfe, a cofounder of Tucson Queerstory, which documents Tucson's LGBTQ community. "I believe ... this is probably the best thing that can happen because it needs to be brand new and come from a different place."  

Michael McFall, publisher of the Phoenix-based Pride Guide that promotes LGBTQ+ events statewide, said losing Tucson Pride "might have been a good thing," giving the community a chance to "start from fresh."

"They just need to kind of regroup," he said. "I think it's going to be at least a couple years before they have a pride, but I don't think it should be done fast. It needs to be done right."

Tucson is not the only city to lose its pride event. Fort Myers, Florida, and Arlington, Texas, nixed their 2025 plans while other cities, including New York, St. Louis and San Francisco, were forced to scale back after losing corporate sponsors, something that also impacted Tucson.

St. Louis lost its biggest corporate sponsor in 2025 when Anheuser-Busch pulled out after facing conservative backlash. A report in Forbes magazine last April showed that nearly two-fifths of corporations, including Anheuser-Busch, Target, Comcast and PepsiCo, scaled back support for LGBTQ Pride Month events last summer largely because of political pressure.