37 min listen
Strange Fruit #194: Rainbows & Roses Soirée Is A Derby Party With A Special LGBTQ Cause
FromStrange Fruit
Strange Fruit #194: Rainbows & Roses Soirée Is A Derby Party With A Special LGBTQ Cause
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
33 minutes
Released:
May 1, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Derby Week is finally here! With it come fancy hats, random celebrity sightings, tardiness to work, and parties all night, every night. Derby events come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of swankiness. This week, we learn about a two-part Thurby night party that's raising money for a cause dear to our own hearts. The Rainbows & Roses Soirée is a fundraiser for the LGBTQ+ Coalition of Louisville, the brainchild of artsits Josh Miller and Theo Edmonds, who join us this week to tell us more. The coalition came together just over a year ago, with members from Louisville Youth Group, Kentuckiana Pride Coalition, Trans Women National, and IDEAS xLab. They have an ambitious five-year plan to create an LGBTQ+ Community Center. Theo Edmonds says they wanted to focus on what people actually want and need before putting any bricks on the ground. "The important part of a community center is that first word: community," he says. Edmonds say they decided to spend a year assessing those needs, so they've held a series of town hall meetings with LGBTQ Louisvillians. "We've had them in nightclubs, we've had them in churches, we've had them on Saturday mornings and Tuesday nights and at the Urban League." What did they learn? How diverse our community really is. "The LGBTQ community is not a monolith. We are as varied as the colors on the rainbow flag. So we wanted to make sure we were hearing from everyone." Proceeds from the Rainbows & Roses Soirée will go towards building the community center. The party will feature performances from LouisVogue and RuPaul's Drag Race All-Star Latrice Royale. Details and tickets are on the coalition's website. Joining us for Juicy Fruit this week is one of our favorite local photographers, Sowande Malone. We tackle the Shea Moisture debacle and hair hate. We also examine People Magazine's choice for most beautiful woman of 2017... Julia Roberts? As you might imagine, we have some picks of our own. Listen to this week's show in the player above, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Released:
May 1, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #54: 'Eenie Meanie' Examines Baby Boomer Racism & Louisville Busing Riots: "These buses came back from the West End with these little kids on them, and they were crying, there were windows knocked out. They had been beaten with baseball bats, they had been called every horrible racial name you can expect, right here in this town." It sounds like a scene we'd expect to see in the deep South, but this happened in Louisville in the middle of the 1970s, when public schools implemented the busing system. That's how performing artist Teresa Willis remembers it, and it makes up part of her one-woman show, [Eenie Meanie](http://eeniemeanie.com/). Because Louisville itself was so segregated, neighborhood schools were largely either black or white. Busing was designed to achieve greater diversity within school, but was met with resistance. "Racism really came out of the closet in my community," Teresa remembers. "There's crosses burning at the football field. Literally, we're at a by Strange Fruit