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Happy Pride ❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎

Photo credit SDOT Flickr

We stand in solidarity with and celebrate our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) staff members and people in the Seattle community.  

We’re on a mission to deliver a transportation system that provides safe and affordable access to places and opportunities. The first of our value statements is Equity. We believe transportation must meet the needs of all our communities, especially our neighbors who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and/or LGBTQIA+.  

As we’re improving safety on our streets by lowering speed limitsredesigning major roads, and retiming traffic lights to make intersections safer for people walking and rolling, we’re also working with community members in the Transportation Equity Workgroup to center voices of BIPOC and vulnerable populations as we develop and implement a transportation equity framework. 

Looking back on the past year, the LGBTQIA+ community has shown incredible perseverance and resilience.  

Through the heights of a global pandemic—one that has exacerbated existing health disparities in our communities—through the protests and ongoing urgency for racial and social justice, and through the financial and economic uncertainty that has impacted the LGBTQIA+ community in various ways. 

During Pride, and all year long, we encourage you to frequent LGBTQIA+ owned businesses in your neighborhood and across Seattle. As we move into and through COVID-19 recovery, we continue to support Seattle businesses by offering food pickup priority zones and free temporary outdoor permits for street and sidewalk cafes, merchandise displays, and more.  

At SDOT, we work to advance equity and ensure that our transportation system and work in the right-of-way is informed by authentic engagement and supports LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community needs and values. Our neighborhoods should be places that reflect our communities and histories, where people have choices about how to get around, and everyone can live without fear—of economic displacement, of traffic violence, or their physical safety. Over the last year, we have made some progress, but there is still a long, long way to go. 

-Sam Zimbabwe, SDOT Director 

Capitol Hill’s rainbow crosswalks are getting refreshed! 

Our crews are working on Capitol Hill to restore 11 rainbow crosswalks in need of repair this month. We’ll also be cleaning the Black Lives Matter street mural on E Pine St.  

The rainbow crosswalks on Capitol Hill were first installed in June 2015. They mark the neighborhood as a center of Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ history and culture and are a way to claim a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community.  

Since their installation, we’ve partnered with other communities across the city to install community crosswalks that reflect neighborhood identities. In addition to highlighting a community’s unique culture and history, the crosswalks liven up intersections with art and color! 

Image courtesy of Seattle Pride 

We’ll certainly miss the big parade this year, but there are plenty of other ways to celebrate Pride month! 

  • Host your own mini Pride parade on your block! With a Play Street permit, you can limit traffic on a residential street for up to 12 hours, and throw a block party or mini parade with your neighbors. Learn more.  
  • Check out Seattle Pride’s Virtual Pride 2021 on Saturday and Sunday, June 26-27. The weekend will be jam-packed with performances, gameshows, educational and activism-focused speakers and panels, virtual booths to connect with local non-profits and vendors, and community gathering/discussion groups. 
  • From June 26-28, enjoy Trans Pride Seattle+’s virtual workshops, films, live-streamed performance and more:  by and for the trans and non-binary community around the world.  
Celebrate Pride with the Library
Image courtesy of Seattle Public Library 

Our LGBTQ employee resource group shared some of their favorite books that celebrate and share many different queer experiences. You can find these books at the Seattle Public Library and local bookstores: 

  • So Lucky by Nicola Griffith (local author). Queer thriller/”crip lit” and winner of the WA State Book Award. 
  • We Had No Rules by Corinne Manning (local author). Collection of queer short stories. 
  • The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco (local author). Historical fiction with a queer Latinx protagonist set in Port Townsend, WA and finalist for the WA State Book Award and Lambda Literary Award. 
  • The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. A classic, semi-autobiographical book full of observations on gender, sexuality, and self-discovery. 
  • Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Classic tragic and queer Baldwin. 
  • The Essential Dykes to Watch Out forFun HomeAre You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. Funny graphic novels/comic dramas by the author that coined the Bechdel test
  • Gender Failure by Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote. Collection of autobiographical essays, lyrics, and images documenting the journey from gender failure to gender self-acceptance. 
  • Redefining Realness by Janet Mock. A coming-of-age as a transgender teen story. 
  • Zami, A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lourde. A story that illuminates the life of an African-American lesbian in the mid-20th century. 
  • In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Memoir written by a Latina about abuse in gay relationships. 
  • Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. A fun novel that explores gays in classics – The Iliad. 
  • Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. Important collection of essays about the nature of transmisogyny,  among other things. 
  • Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom. A spectacular, semi-surrealist novel/memoir about a trans girl’s coming of age. 
  • How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Interviews and essays showcasing the Black lesbian feminists who essentially founded intersectional feminism. 
  • Captive Genders edited by Eric Stanley and Nat Smith. Anthology about trans and genderqueer people in prison. 
  • Hunger by Roxane Gay. An intense memoir exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. 

Want more? Check out the Seattle Public Library’s LGBTQ Staff Picks

Interested in film? Check out these resources:

An Intersectional Lens: Towards a Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC) Film Canon  

This annotated filmography seeks to offer a curated list of films from A to Z addressing the many, many different aspects of life as a Queer or Trans Person of Color (QTPOC) in the United States. 

Three Dollar Bill Cinema in Capitol Hill  

Three Dollar Bill Cinema hosts queer films, community dialogue and educational experiences. They have been running virtual programs over the last year and will have Pride Month programming.