In the last few months, I have seen posts online and spoken with community leaders who lament the waning community engagement, while others say we couldn’t have more involvement! So I decided to ask a few members of the LGBTQ community their thoughts, as well as reflect on it myself.

This time last year we were able to get 300 people to respond and about 200 people to show up to a town hall-style meeting about interest in an LGBTQ community center. More about that in a future column, but that level of engagement tells me when the community is interested, it shows up.

That being said, I have noticed that I am not able to go to as many events as I would like, and when I go to community events, sometimes there are fewer people there.

One of the people I spoke with, who does more events than me, is Dale LePage. Dale is a fabulous award-winning male entertainer. He said, “It’s very difficult to find time for the things that I actually need to get done. We can’t be everything to everyone, and we can’t be all places, all the time. Central Massachusetts is bombarded with incredible fun events, music, art, political meetings, etc. When I started New England Pride TV, I had a huge group of supportive people who attended meetings and reached out to me. In the seven months New England Pride TV has been airing, my support team has dwindled from 25 to four people, which is crazy because now that it’s actually doing so well and getting noticed and airing in over a million homes, I need the help more than ever. Everyone is so busy in their own personal lives – as I am and as we all are – it’s really hard to find the time to do the things we want to do.”

I also spoke with Heather Mangione, of Air Spray, Worcester’s Queer Dance Party. Her perspective was that she has seen an increase in participation! “I think in the last few years, LGBT community engagement has definitely increased! Airspray is three years old this November, Pride is definitely bigger, and we have a youth Pride! That’s huge! But I think we can only make the connections stronger. The LGBT networking event is growing, the college students are reaching out more, etc. I think the next two years will really see a lot of positive growth for LGBT community engagement in Worcester!”

Finally, I spoke with Peter Bacchiocchi, president of Worcester Pride. “We have worked hard to build a social media presence with good success. We continue to struggle with developing personal engagement. We have increased our overall participation somewhat by focusing on increasing our sub-committee activities and providing each sub-committee with more focused topic areas.”

My experience is that Pride has grown every year in the last five-plus years, even with the rain this year!

While we only have one bar solely dedicated to the LGBTQ Community (shout out to the MB Lounge and its awesome Pride flag), we have events at many locations. As a former leader of Pride and someone who has volunteered with many of these activities, I do understand the struggle. We do see more and more events on social media, but rather than seeing the ones we couldn’t go to as missed opportunities, we should just see them as opportunities. We are growing as a community, and that anxious feeling of missed opportunities is just growing pains! Central Massachusetts is genuinely hopping with activity, and if you are not involved, this is your call to action!

Have an idea for a new column topic? Email John@JohnArt.com.

By John Trobaugh