Pride South Side 2026: Why Safe Spaces for Black LGBTQ+ Chicago Matter More Than Ever

Pride South Side came back for its eighth year on July 5 at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, with more than a dozen performers and a record forty vendors. Our Executive Director, Adam L. McMath, joined the panel conversations, and the theme that ran through the day was hard to miss: safe spaces are no longer a nice-to-have.

“Safe places are extremely important,” Adam told the Hyde Park Herald in its coverage of the festival. The urgency is real. Federal attacks on transgender people and cuts to arts funding have hit community organizations directly. Black Alphabet lost its NEA funding, one of the biggest early hits our organization has taken.

What Uganda taught us

Adam also spoke about the underground film festival we held in Uganda in 2023, where attending a screening meant real risk. People came anyway. Some had lost friends to violence or prison simply for being LGBTQ+. When showing up costs that much, you learn what a safe room is actually worth.

Safe space is what we build

This is the work Black Alphabet exists for. The Jamii Center in Bronzeville keeps its doors open year round. Our free art therapy programs give people a place to process what this moment is doing to them. And the Black Alphabet Film Festival keeps putting our stories on screen, here and abroad.

Help us hold the door open

Public funding is shrinking while the need grows. If safe spaces matter to you, a gift of any size keeps ours open. You can also join us at an upcoming event. Community is the thing they cannot defund.