Baltimore Pride (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Baltimore celebrates Pride this weekend with a block party, parade and festival. The Pride Parade and Block Party will take place on Saturday, beginning at 1 p.m. The parade route will begin at the intersection of Eager and Charles streets and continue on Charles Street up to Mount Royal Avenue. The festival runs Saturday 2-8 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. All Pride weekend events will then take place at Mount Royal Avenue and Cathedral St. (No events will take place in Druid Hill Park, as in years past.)

The organization that runs Baltimore Pride announced that Tom Patrick was named as the parade’s grand marshal and Sharon Brackett as the 2014 Activist of the Year.

Patrick is a longtime employee with the non-profit organization Moveable Feast. According to Tom Boderenko, executive director of Moveable Feast, “Patrick engaged thousands of individuals, corporations, churches and schools to volunteer at Moveable Feast, but he has challenged them to think about their fears and stereotypes of the LBGT community, and especially people living with HIV/AIDS.”

Brackett is the founder and board chair of Gender Rights Maryland, an organization advocating for transgender rights and had been instrumental in the passage of the Fairness for All Marylanders Act, also known as SB212, which was recently signed into law.