This month, FEMA joins the Biden-Harris Administration in the recognition of Pride Month, honoring the diverse members of the LGBTQI+ community and their vast contributions to our agency and our nation.
FEMA’s core values of compassion, fairness, integrity and respect guide every aspect of our service to the nation and its communities, including the LGBTQI+ community, and FEMA will continue to elevate programs and efforts to support them.
This year marks 55 years since the Stonewall Rebellion that was the impetus for the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement and 20 years since the first White House Proclamation was issued to designate June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. The word “pride” was carefully chosen as the name for this annual celebration.
In a 2015 interview, activist Craig Schoonmaker recalled why he chose the name one year after the rebellion, “There’s very little chance for people in the world to have power… But anyone can have pride in themselves, and that would make them happier as people, and produce the movement likely to produce change.”
This Pride Month, FEMA will host several events at its Washington, D.C., headquarters in and nationwide through its regional offices, to provide an opportunity for LGBTQI+ community members and their allies to meet and talk about issues pertaining to their identities, get to know each other, build rapport and create a supportive LGBTQI+ Family.
In the collection Twenty-One Love Poems, American poet and essayist Adrienne Cecile Rich captured the strength and resilience of the LGBTQI+ community in this excerpt from their work simply titled “I”:
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding …
FEMA and our workforce are enhanced by the diversity of those who serve this agency and the nation, and we join this annual celebration of love, equality and appreciation.