The Jersey City Independent "

A young black man took the stage and shouted, “When I say ‘fire,’ you say ‘burn’!”

“Fire!” he shouted.

“Burn!” the crowd replied with the fervor of a Jamaican audience at a Capleton show.

But this call-and-response exercise was not a homophobic demand to “bun di chi-chi” at a dancehall concert.

“We have war on Iraq,” said the poet rocking an Afro-centric wristband and with a pick jutting from his afro. “When we have war on the poor, war on blacks.”

And this passionate critique was not a speech at a Black Power or anti-war rally.

Welcome to Jersey City Pride 2006. Stretching from Sunday, Aug. 20 to the following Saturday, Jersey City Lesbian and Gay Outreach’s (JCLGO) 5ith annual celebration was one that provided entertainment, inspiration, and visibility for Jersey City’s LGBTQ population. The weeklong event featured several events, including a festival, a film screening at the Jersey City Museum, a church blessing of same sex couples, numerous parties, and, as evidenced, a youth poetry slam at Baker Boys Café.

JCLGO is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 to satisfy Jersey City’s need for its own LGBTQ community outside of the dominant New York City scene. Shortly thereafter, JCLGO put on Jersey City’s first ever LGBTQ Pride Festival, with tolerance and inclusion for queers being among its flagship goals. However, in Jersey City — where the population is predominantly black and Latino — do minorities feel included?

While many cities’ mainstream gay prides may aim for queer visibility, they are often run by the privileged majority — white men — leaving minorities feeling invisible. The 35-city Black Pride circuit is a testament to blacks’ need and demand for a space that acknowledges and celebrates their lives as non-white LGBTQs. Washington, Atlanta, and Los Angeles have the largest celebrations of this kind.

Back at the poetry slam at Baker Boys Café, diversity doesn’t seem to be a problem as the poets’ passionate oratories float like fireworks into the night sky of the roofless backyard garden. The intimate brick-walled space and cheese, fruit, and cracker tray provides a stark contrast to the unpretentious population in attendance. Faces of color outnumber white ones. Dreadlocks, cornrow-faux hawk hybrids, headscarves, military caps, and Afro-centric wristbands are the norm.

Oh, and the poetry. This isn’t your mother’s — or even your mainstream Gay Pride’s — poetry. These pieces are at times X-rated, at times sorrowful, at times hilarious, but always dramatic. It is poetry molded from living in a society that marginalizes cultural minorities.

“This chick could never be her. This chick told me to hold her syringe for her,” Suelve Guerra laments about a sister stolen by drugs.

Speaking about race, drugs and oppression at a gay event is evidence of the duality that queer cultural minorities face — for them, race competes with sexual orientation as the most important identifier in their lives.

“[Many of the poets] didn’t talk about being gay; they talked about being them,” said Dejuana Neville, host of the event. “If you covered everyone’s face, you wouldn’t know who’s gay. You can’t tell gayness from a poem.”

The space given to these minority poets could indicate the inclusiveness of Jersey City Pride and the city’s gay life. In fact, Neville, who is founder of the spoken word poetry phenomenon The Cypher Movement, said that she “only sees positivity” regarding Pride.

But when asked about whether JC Pride has been diverse and inclusive in the past, she rolled her eyes and laughed, giving a resounding “No.” The lack of inclusion in past Prides has coincided with the lack of opportunities for black gays in the city, she said.

Other than “a few speckles in the crowd,” she said, there were very few blacks in attendance at Pride only three years ago. “For a lot of the time I’ve lived in Jersey City, there used to be nothing,” she said. “I remember when Albert’s was the only gay anything.”

However, she is optimistic. If the quality of the dating pool is a barometer of a city’s quality of life, then perhaps Jersey City is moving in the right direction. As a black lesbian, Neville used to delve exclusively into the abundant gay population of New York City.

“Now women in Jersey City are finally filling out applications!” she said, laughing.

Jersey City Rising

Yvette Cid, co-founder of Chilltown Pride Center, a service organization for LGBTQ in Hudson County, sees Jersey City as more than an up-and-coming place for queers to date — it’s a place to thrive. Most businesses are gay friendly, she said, with an increasing number becoming gay-owned.

“Today we’re everywhere,” she said about the queer community in Jersey City.

And this isn’t a new phenomenon, according to Cid. As a life-long resident, she said that the city has always been open to the gay community. She noted that it is becoming popular to compare Jersey City to Manhattan’s West Village.

As security coordinator for the Pride Festival, she sees the Village’s ethnic diversity reflected in Jersey City’s Pride. Half-Puerto Rican and half-Italian, she considers herself to be a testament to Pride’s inclusion.

“Not only am I Hispanic, but I’m a woman and I’m gay — talk about a minority!” she said. She added that JCLGO was just invited to participate in this year’s Puerto Rican Day parade.

“Jersey City is predominantly black and Hispanic,” she said, indicating that because the city’s gays are already minorities, it’s only natural for them to participate in Pride.

‘A Quieter Life’

However, Fred Pierce, a black gay man who DJed at a Pride party, doesn’t think it is so natural for minorities to fit in at Pride. A party promoter with his ear to urban young people, he knows of blacks who tried to get involved with Pride in the past.

“For all of Jersey City’s diversity, they just didn’t feel welcome, because it was so white-oriented,” he said. The first Jersey City Pride he went to years ago only featured “a smattering of Latinos and virtually no blacks.”

Despite DJing at Jersey City’s first major black gay party, at the now defunct club Albert’s, and currently working a similar party on Wednesdays called FlyLife, Pierce doesn’t think Jersey City has much of a gay culture at all. Gay bars open, only to close a couple years later.

“Gay life is subdued over here because of its proximity to New York City,” he explained. “You can go to New York, get your party and cruising on, and then come back to Jersey to live a quieter life.”

Indeed, having experienced DJing and party promoting in New York at such clubs as Octagon, Mars 2112 and Exit, he knows that he has to plan parties in NJ so that they don’t coincide with bashes across the river. Due to the allure of New York City, he doesn’t think the availability of activities for gays in Jersey City has changed much.

With a lack of New Jersey gay life, many blacks turn to Black Prides to satisfy their interests and needs, making a mainstream pride irrelevant.

While Pierce finds it curious and telling that the official Jersey City Pride Festival party is being held in affluent Hoboken, outside of its minority-populated host city, he doesn’t think there is any ill-will or concerted effort to alienate blacks. Pierce is holding an “urban” alternative at Blue Ribbon in Jersey City, that same night.

Still, Pierce thinks black LGBTQs should show their faces at Jersey City Pride, to be visible and be counted.

“As a party promoter, I believe it is important for black people to make our own party,” he said. “Even in a world of white.”

On the Web:
JCLGO
Chilltown Pride Center
The Cypher Movement

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