Downeast Pride

Downeast Pride is organized by the Downeast Rainbow Alliance in Washington County, held in Eastport in recent years. It includes a Pride march, drag performances by the Curbside Queens, vendors, live music, and a tea dance hosted by the Eastport Arts Center.

The Downeast Rainbow Alliance started in 2013 as a Community Circle supporting GSTA clubs in area high schools. Its mission has since widened to advocacy, education and support for the LGBTQ2IA+ community of the Passamaquoddy Homeland, now called Washington County. The coalition includes young adults, health care workers, educators, organizers and allies, meets monthly on Zoom and is fiscally sponsored by NOPI, a Massachusetts nonprofit. In 2020 it launched the Traveling Rainbow, a grant-funded project aimed at improving mental health through social experiences and wider allyship.

Pride has moved around the region over the years. The 2019 edition drew more than 300 people to events at the University of Maine at Machias, the Eastport Arts Center and the Chowderhouse, and MaineTransNet named the alliance one of six organizations that changed Maine for trans people that year. In 2020 Pride became socially distanced pop-up events across Eastport, and in 2021 it raised money for partner groups.

The 2022 events reached about 500 people in Eastport and Lubec with a focus on local teens. In 2023 more than 600 people attended, with allyship trainings, a Cherryfield Pride Night and a brunch and parade in Lubec. The 2024 festival opened with Pride T-shirt screen printing at the Tides Museum, featured four bands and moved indoors to Lubec Brewing Company when rain hit, after a walking parade down Water Street. It drew more than 400 people.

Pride events celebrate LGBTQ+ people and mark the Stonewall uprising of June 1969. Most combine a parade or march with a festival of performers, community groups, vendors and food.

Downeast Pride has included march, drag performances and tea dance.

Downeast Pride was first held in 2019. Organizers reported 600+ attendees people in 2023.

The next edition is June 27, 2027. It usually falls last Sunday of June.