District of Columbia
Proposed budget cut by DC Council called harmful to LGBTQ Pride events
Mayor’s office opposes elimination of Festival Fund
The D.C. Council Committee on Business and Economic Development voted on April 27 to approve a series of budget recommendations to the full Council that calls for cutting $1.5 million from a city program that has helped to support the city’s Capital Pride parade and festival.
The program in question, known as the Festival Fund or Special Event Relief Fund, has for many years exempted community-based organizations like the Capital Pride Alliance, from having to pay the costs of street closings and police and other public safety support services for such events.
The proposed cut for this program, if approved by the full D.C. Council, would be part of the city’s fiscal year 2024 budget.
Ryan Bos, executive director of Capital Pride Alliance, said elimination of the Festival Fund program could result in Capital Pride having to pay between $550,000 and $750,000 to hold the city’s popular Capital Pride Parade, Festival, Block Party, and other Pride events in 2024, when the elimination of the Festival Fund would take effect.
“This Fund is essential to supporting events that celebrate the culture of the District of Columbia and its communities, including events like the Capital Pride Celebration – particularly ahead of ensuring a successful World Pride in 2025,” according to a statement Capital Pride released to the Washington Blade.
“Elimination of the Fund may require that we look carefully at each event that we produce to determine where cuts to the budget may be needed,” the statement says. “It is important to note that events such as the Capital Pride Celebration generate significant revenue for the D.C. government,” the statement says.
In mentioning World Pride 2025, the statement was referring to the decision by leaders of the international LGBTQ event known as World Pride, to select D.C. and the Capital Pride Alliance to host the 2025 World Pride in June of that year. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from foreign countries as well as from the host country usually attend Word Pride events.
It couldn’t immediately be determined how the elimination of the city’s Festival Fund would impact the D.C. 2025 World Pride, but the Capital Pride statement suggests the elimination of the fund could dramatically increase the costs for putting it on.
A May 9 press release issued by the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser expresses opposition to the Council committee’s proposed $1.5 million cut in the Festival Fund budget and the committee’s proposed cuts of $3 million each for two other programs that the release says have supported community-based businesses.
One of them is called the Great Streets and Small Business Fund and the other is known as the Food Access Fund, which supports restaurants in Wards 7 and 8, according to the mayor’s press release.
“Last week, the Council proposed cuts to these three programs, including the elimination of the Festival Fund,” the press release says.
These and multiple other budget-related proposals by the Committee on Business and Economic Development are outlined in detail in a 96-page draft report released on April 27. The report says the committee voted 4-0 to approve the report and its proposals, with one member of the committee — Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large) — being absent when the vote was taken.
Those voting yes included Council member Kenyan McDuffie (I-At Large), who chairs the committee, and Council members Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), and Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7).
D.C. gay activist John Fanning, who serves as Bonds’s director of constituent services, said Bonds opposes the proposed $1.5 million cut in the Festival Fund budget and plans to urge her fellow Council members to remove the proposed cut from the Council’s final budget proposal.
Fanning said Bonds was absent for the committee vote because she was attending a budget markup hearing at the same time for the Council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor for which Bonds is the chairperson.
According to Fanning, Bonds is aware of the importance of the Festival Fund’s support for events like Capital Pride and other events, including the Cherry Blossom Festival, the H Street Festival, the Fiesta DC Hispanic event, and an event called Porchfest.
“Council member Bonds also had concerns that any cancellations of festivals and events would impact the connectivity of people, after several years of isolation during the pandemic,” Fanning said.
Spokespersons for McDuffie and fellow committee members Allen, Pinto, and Gray didn’t immediately respond to a request by the Blade for comment on why they supported the proposed $1.5 million cut in the Festival Fund.
“The Capital Pride Alliance has reached out to the [Council] Chair and all members of the City Council to encourage them to object to this budget cut,” the Capital Pride statement to the Blade says.
The Council’s Committee of the Whole, which consists of all 13 Council members, and that is chaired by Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), was expected to consider, and possibly vote on, all Council committee budget proposals on May 16.
Later in the day on Thursday, May 11, after the Blade posted this story, Councilmember McDuffie responded to Blade’s earlier request for comment on why he and his fellow committee members voted to cut the $1.5 million Festival Fund.
“As a former civil rights attorney and current champion for equity and inclusion on the Council, I support the Pride Parade and appreciate its mission to fight for equality and honor the history of the LGBTQ+ community,” McDuffie told the Blade in a short statement.
But McDuffie said members of the Committee on Business and Economic Development made the difficult decision to make “deep cuts to several programs” to offset what he said was Mayor Bowser’s decision to defund in her proposed budget the Child Wealth Building Act or Baby Bonds program.
That program, McDuffie points out, is designed to “help close the racial wealth gap in our city by investing in children born into poverty” and providing financial support upon their turning 18 years of age to help pay, among other things, for education and purchasing a home.
“I am working with the Council Chairman to identify any available funds to support the Festival Fund,” McDuffie said.
In a separate response to a Blade inquiry, a spokesperson for Council Chair Mendelson said Mendelson is aware of the committee’s decision to cut the Festival Fund and he is looking for a way to restore that funding in his budget proposal. The spokesperson, Lindsey Walton, said Mendelson plans to release his budget proposal on Monday, May 15.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vida Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vida Rangel, she/they [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
District of Columbia
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
Protest Pizza owners say community has expressed support
Gay activist Randy Downs said he and his business and life partner Ricky Bennett are grateful for the support they have received from the Dupont Circle community after they released a video showing a suspect breaking into their recently opened pizza shop and taking money from a cash register shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21.
The surveillance video shows a man wearing black clothing with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of Protest Pizza, located at 1633 ½ P St., N.W. The video, which Downs and Bennett provided to D.C. police, also shows the suspect climbing over the bar to get to a cash register, which he opened to take out cash.
A D.C. police report obtained by the Washington Blade lists the incident as a Burglary in the Second Degree and says the owners reported “approximately $78 in cash” was taken from the cash register. The report says the incident is not listed as a suspected hate crime.
Downs told the Washington Blade that after he and Bennett reported the break-in and theft on social media, they received an overwhelming showing of support from neighbors and others, including business owners, from across the nation.
“The break-in was upsetting, but it is not what will define Protest Pizza,” Downs said. “What defines us is how quickly people showed up,” he told the Blade. “One person came looking for a cash register; our community saw a gathering place worth protecting. The response reminded us that Protest’s real value was never in the register.”
Downs said he and Bennett, who live around the corner on the section of 17th Street, N.W., near several other bars and restaurants, including the gay bar JRs are located, opened Protest Pizza in November 2025.
“Ricky and I built Protest Pizza as a positive, welcoming, queer owned neighborhood restaurant and bar — a space for protest and joy,” he said.
A D.C. police spokesperson said police offer a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect responsible for the type of burglary and theft that occurred at Protest Pizza. Police say anyone with information to help solve this type of crime should call the police tipline at 202-727-9099.
District of Columbia
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Annual ceremony held at conclusion of Trans Pride DC
The 2026 SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in D.C. on Saturday. The ceremony was held at the conclusion of the day-long Trans Pride DC: Encore.
Honorees included D.C. Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs Deputy Director Vida Rangel; the LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, Inc.; and Connor Keuntje, CLP, CLPC.
Trans Pride DC: Encore was held throughout Saturday with several workshop sessions and a virtual conversation with actress and advocate Dominique Jackson.
The annual Engendered Spirit Awards were renamed the “SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards” in honor of SaVanna Wanzer, founder of D.C. Trans Pride. Wanzer died on April 24 of this year.
Speakers at the ceremony included Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Bianca Sprague, executive director of D.C. Trans Pride.
“The intent behind this award and honoring members of our communities, organizations, and allies, is to really elevate all of the work that they’re doing to provide resources, tools, learning opportunities and connections: centering trans folks, gender non-conforming, and gender diverse individuals,” Sprague said.
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Two awesome, affordable rides
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
