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Hundreds of people marched through the streets of West Philadelphia on Saturday, taking part in the 25th annual Peoplehood Parade & Pageant.
Participants from at least 42 groups carried artwork and played music while advocating for issues including Palestine, immigrant rights, affordable housing, ending cash bail, safe streets and public transit.
Hundreds of people representing 42 groups marched in the 25th annual Peoplehood Parade, advocating for a number of different causes. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
Jennifer Turnbull, co-executive director of Spiral Q, which organizes the parade and spends months building the artworks exhibited in both the parade and pageant, told the crowd that the event is “a handmade and people-powered celebration of solidarity, creativity and courage.”
“Peoplehood is not just a single day. It’s an art-making and community-building process that takes …. hundreds of artists, activists, families, students and you to create,” they said.
Hundreds of people representing 42 groups marched in the 25th annual Peoplehood Parade, advocating for a number of different causes. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
Turnbull told WHYY News that the 25th anniversary is a special moment.
“I’m most excited for us to be able to do this 25 times, and for it to always be something that is necessary and needed for our communities to have moments of solidarity and joy and collective assembly and exercising our First Amendment rights,” she said.
Hundreds of people representing 42 groups marched in the 25th annual Peoplehood Parade, advocating for a number of different causes. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
Themes of this year’s parade and pageant, Turnbull said, are centered, as they always are, on “protecting our communities.”
“It’s about making sure that all of our folks have access to their basic needs,” they said. “And it is when people don’t have access to their basic needs and being able to have freedom of expression, that’s when things start to break down … That’s what Spiral Q has always been about, making sure that our stories are told and heard and that we have agency to advocate for ourselves.”
Angelita Ellison, of Sharswood, marched in the parade for the first time. She participated with the Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition, advocating for affordable housing.
“I volunteer with them and in their housing committee, and we’re very interested in the mayor’s H.O.M.E program and how that’s gonna affect the city,” she said. “And we would just like to have that program focus on the folks who need it the most, lower income Philadelphians.”
Hundreds of people representing 42 groups marched in the 25th annual Peoplehood Parade, advocating for a number of different causes. (Emily Neil/WHYY)
