Philadelphia is a city of firsts. We are responsible for the first lending library, the first university, the first zoo, the first hospital and America’s first world’s fair. This weekend, we’re adding another first: A three-day event with a Pride flag raising, a huge festival/resource fair and America’s first National Coming Out Day Parade.
OURfest (*Our Uniting Resilience) is being coordinated under the banner of Galaei’s Pride 365 Initiative. The three-day extravaganza starts off with the annual LGBTQ+ History Month Kick-off and National Coming Out Day Flag Raising event on Oct. 6, featuring a More Color More Pride flag being raised at noon. The parade will take place on Saturday from 4-6 p.m., from 5th and Market to Broad and Locust and will feature a mix of curated and designed floats, and Sunday brings the street festival, which will feature DJs, drag performers, music, vendors, food trucks and mobile bars, a resource fair, an activity-filled family zone and if this year’s Pride Day festival was any indication, more queer people than you can shake a stick at (but don’t shake sticks at people, that seems aggressive).
We spoke to Galaei Executive Director Tyrell Brown to find out a little bit about them as they get ready for the weekend’s festivities.
So let’s start at the beginning. Were you born in this area?
I was actually born at Delaware County Memorial Hospital. My mother’s water broke when she was shopping with my grandmother and that’s where they took her. We’d live back and forth between Yeadon, Darby and Philadelphia throughout my childhood. I spent most of my teen years in the graduate hospital area. That was my stomping ground from the age of 12 up to the age of 16.
Tell me a little bit about the family.
I am one of four official children. I have an older sister, Iana Brown, who is a year older than me. Growing up, we were like twins. I have a younger sister, Jenaya, who is just a thorn in my side. We love joking and chiding each other. She’s six years younger than me. And then there’s my younger brother, Steven, who is 16 years younger than me. He was the miracle baby that came long after my mother thought she was done with having children. My mom’s name is Regina Brown. She’s the matriarch of my family and I have lots of cousins and extended family including an uncle, who unfortunately passed a few years ago, I believe from complications of HIV. I used to steal his PGNs when I was young!
That’s fun to hear.
And there’s my grandmother, of course, and my grandfather. But I lived with my Aunt Gail who was my godmother. She was at the birth of each one of my siblings. I lived at her house when I was going through my difficult teen coming out years. And then I also have my two dads, Mike and Joe, up in Collegeville, who took me in and supported me and wrapped their arms around me and treated me like one of their own children when they already had three children themselves.
What precipitated the move to your aunt’s home?
Many things. Aunt Gail had three sons, my cousins Greg, Carl and Andrew. Andrew and I were like two peas in the pod, joined at the hip. I think my mother saw that there might have been a need for me to be in an environment like that, for affirming, I guess, my masculinity, which now seems so archaic. Their house was the house everyone went to. I always wanted to be over there and after a while, before you knew it, I was staying the entire summer. So I just stopped going home. I was just there all the time and my aunt and cousins enjoyed me being there. It was also a time of community raising community, you know, with my mother and my aunt Gail sharing the responsibilities of raising all of us.
There’s always one house in the family that everybody goes to. That was my Uncle Bobby and my Aunt Josephine’s house for me.
Yes, and there were other difficulties in my case too. I came out to my mother at the age of 15. She was just recovering from addiction. She’s been clean for about three decades now, but there were difficulties in the household growing up. And then the dynamics of me as a teenager coming out as she was trying to get her life together contributed to an environment that wasn’t really supportive for me, or for the rest of the family. So I left the house at the age of 16 and stayed either at my grandmother’s house or my aunt’s house. Then when I turned 18, I decided to chase a boy out to Davenport, Iowa. I took a Greyhound bus the day after Halloween with a bag of Halloween candy, and a change of clothes. And I moved to Davenport, Iowa.
How did coming out go with the siblings?
Well, my younger brother wasn’t born until a year after I came out. My younger sister was always a cheerleader for me, personally. So our relationship didn’t change, and like I said, my older sister and I were like twins so we were bonded. We were both in high school, and I think her deepest concern was the bullying that I was dealing with. There were a lot of fights and people threatening me, things like that. Coming out was very different back then, we didn’t really have any affirming spaces. They’re scarce today, and I came out the year after Matthew Shepard was killed. So I was also dealing with the fear of what could potentially happen, after watching films like “Boys Don’t Cry” and hearing Shepard’s story. There was always that lens where you were hyper cognizant that you had come out publicly and were queer, or different and that you were going to be targeted for those things. I did have some really awesome friends then like my very best friend, Janelle. She was my saving grace and we were joined at the hip. Bonnie and Clyde. We are still best friends to this day. I also really got into art and poetry. I was in a band, and I dabbled in journalism. In high school, we started our own activist newsletter called The Writer’s Block, and wrote articles about things impacting teen life. She was my accomplice in that too — another family member that I don’t know where I would be without, frankly.
Where did you distribute your newspaper?
Funny story, we distributed it at school and we were told by the administration to stop because it was causing too much of a fluff up. We were getting people to talk about things, you know, so we were told to stop doing it. And then we decided to do one more issue, and we all received in-school suspensions. But we’d pass it out in school. We’d also pass it out on South Street, drop it off at Wooden Shoe books, and we’d pass it to people walking by and get in debates with people. It was sort of exercising that mobilization and outreach muscle that I have to exercise today.
So what did you do after high school?
I moved to Davenport, Iowa, for that guy, came back, started working retail and decided to take some classes at CCP. And then I stopped going and just worked retail. I was managing a few stores. When I decided to go back to school because I wanted to be a teacher, that was my dream. I was always inspired by Morgan Freeman in “Lean on Me” and Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society.” I wanted to be that. So I went back to get my degree in business administration and early childhood education. I received two associates for those and then started directing a childcare center. I did that for a while.
But one of the things that I like to emphasize is that I’ve gotten to where I am, in this capacity right now at Galaei, by non-traditional means. To show that you can get your hands into organizing, and helping the community, doing outreach, mutual aid and things like that and people will respect your labor enough to lay the responsibility of really big things on your shoulders. Especially when you aspire to do great things in the service of others. That’s how I gradually came to where I am now. I dabbled in organizing work, canvassing for different candidates in the early and mid 2000s. [Laughing] And then I moved to Washington, DC, again, chasing after a boy!
I’m seeing a pattern here!
Yeah, it was really unfortunate because he is still one of my soulmates but was suffering from schizophrenia. I moved back home because it wasn’t tenable to live there anymore. He kind of went off the rails and made several attempts at suicide. He went into a mental hospital and when he was released from the hospital, he disappeared. So I don’t know where he is or whether or not he is still alive. But then I met my fiancé, Kerry, and we’ve been together since!
Wow, that’s a lot. Let’s talk a little bit about the festival, since that’s coming up this weekend. I’m really excited for it. You guys did an amazing job this year with Pride. What are some of the things people can expect this year? And why is it important to do it the way you’re doing it?
Yes, we’re also excited to be helping to facilitate a National Coming Out Day celebration which hasn’t been done since 2019 here. One of the things that we really started to wrap our arms around is the idea of being in service to the community, looking at the health disparities, looking at the disparities in housing, food service and support, looking at all these things, and building a festival with resources to help people. Providing entertainment to get people to engage with the people that might have healthcare linkages and resources that they need — tangible help. I’ve always looked at Pride as an implicit resource. There’s community there, and that ended up, itself, as a resource because of safety in numbers. It’s also how you meet and bond with people, and cross paths with people that you may not necessarily traditionally be used to. So it’s really important for that to happen.
But the layer that I always felt was there but wasn’t necessarily prioritized, was this community joining aspect, where we got a lot of organizations directly involved and really lifted up their work and directed people to make sure that they were going to these organizations that day, or moving forward. I think it’s important to do that, to create the safety net we deserve. There are a lot of inequities when it pertains to our community. So I think it’s important that when we have these opportunities [and] that we have the resources that people need, not just for the joy, and the celebration, but also the other important aspects that we need 365 days of the year.
I read that you believe in the notion of celebrating queer love as an act of defiance. What does that mean to you?
Oppression is real, you know, and it’s being layered on top of the austerity that we’ve experienced, which is harmful as well. We deserve equity as a community and as individuals, just as vessels on this planet. But one of the things that we’re told as we come out is not to be proud of ourselves. We’re told to be ashamed of how we express ourselves. We’re told, in many ways, both legislatively and with discrimination in different institutions, that who we are is not acceptable.
So when we celebrate each other, and when we love each other, when we join a community at these events, it is an act of defiance against our oppressors. It’s an act of defiance against anyone who would seek to try to put a cap on what’s possible for any queer, trans, lesbian, gay or bisexual person who just wanted to be their best selves in this world. And I think it’s really important when we do have these events, that people really understand that there is a deeper meaning.
I know one of the things you’ve created is the Legacy Lane. How important is history to you?
I mean, history to me is the life-driving force. Years ago, I worked at Spruce Street Video. I love looking at history films, like “Back to Stonewall.” I also love looking at videos of old Philadelphia, of just people walking around and what it looked like, and then imagining how it felt. And studying the people who were the pioneers, the ones who created the basis for the things that I’m able to do now. The brave people that took the first steps towards expressing what queer and trans liberation look like, and what organizing looks like.
I think it was important to create Legacy Lane, because I think something else that was missing was making sure that during these events, people see the people that have done things to move this community. It just didn’t happen. You know, people actually took risks. People stuck their necks out for the greater good. There was the risk of losing jobs and family and there were the threats of violence. Because when you become a beacon of light that stands up, that wants to serve, support and protect other people who are marginalized, you become the lightning rod, and you tend to take on more of those direct threats. It was and is a real risk. It’s not lost on me that those were people that should be applauded for their efforts and revered for the work that they did in the past, and some people that are still around doing it.
Right on. OK, now some totally random questions. What was a favorite toy as a kid?
Horses, Breyer horse collectibles.
What was it about the horses that you liked so much?
They were model horses, but I grew up loving horses. My dream as a child was to grow up and be a horse farmer, believe it or not. I collected farm animals and on a green carpet on the table, I would set up entire networks of what a farm and stable would look like using these little model horses and things. I would bring out the World Book Encyclopedia, read about horses and how fast they ran, and you know, where Mustangs live, and why they aren’t free anymore. And that’s sort of why they resonated with me as a child, because I also felt like I was caging something. Even now, I still watch National Geographic specials on those things.
Who would you bring back for one last performance?
So many! But the one that’s popping in my head right now is Marvin Gaye. And then, if I had a second choice, it would be Prince.
Well, maybe we’ll get a Prince impersonator for the festival!
You never know!