Correspondent photo / Karla Dines
Crash the Great performs at the Full Spectrum Pride in the Valley festival Saturday at Courthouse Square. The event, hosted by Full Spectrum Community Outreach Center, marked the sixth Pride festival in Warren.

The sixth annual event kicked off with a parade around Courthouse Square consisting of cars, floats and individual community members. Full Spectrum Community Outreach Center of Youngstown sponsored the festival. It featured live music, including bands and local artists, a beer garden, food trucks, more than 125 vendors and a variety of family-friendly activities.

The event concluded with a Drag Extravaganza.

The bleachers were filled as 14 separate drag queens performed.

Kristy Kubala, 26, of Sarasota, Florida, was visiting the area when she heard about the festival. Kubala, who identifies as bisexual, said she met one of the drag queens who inspired her.

Kubala said, “I had no idea this was going on. It is nice to see so many people in one place being who they really are.”

Katie Coriston of the Full Spectrum Community Outreach Center was coordinator of the event. Full Spectrum is a non-profit, serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) community in a variety of ways. The festival serves as a fundraiser for the organization. Their mission is to help build an inclusive Mahoning Valley where LGBTQIA+ people thrive as complete members of society. They offer a range of services and promote awareness, while also advocating for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Coriston said, “We started organizing this year’s event pretty much the day after last year’s event.”

Hopeanne Lovrinoff-Moran, with the non-profit OHIOCAN (Change Addiction Now), was passing out literature, as well as harm reduction supplies, including Narcan and Fentanyl test strips. Lovrinoff-Moran’s stepdaughter and her daughter’s friend both died of overdoses. She explained that trauma, such as being ostracized and otherwise excluded from a family or group, can lead to drug abuse.

Lovrinoff-Moran said, “We are here to create a community and welcome everyone.”

Nex Thomas of Youngstown and several other volunteers with Free Mom Hugs, a national organization, were giving hugs to anyone wishing to be hugged.

Thomas said, “Moms, dads, brothers and sisters are all members of our organization. It is not limited to moms who are giving hugs to those people who might not have the love and support they need at home, the very group that the founder of the organization, Sara Cunningham, wished to support.”

Cunningham, a conservative Christian mother of a gay son, wanted to spread love to the LGBTQ+ community via hugs.

Thomas added, “When hugging another person, it is important to let that person let go first.”

Dakotah Perrigo of Transfer, Pa., Linda Grimm of Struthers and Jolie Hubert of New Galilee, Pa., passed out bracelets and information at their booth. It was their first year at the festival, where they represented the Unity Spiritual Center of Girard. Perrigo’s 11-year-old dog, Weiner, was popular with attendees, many of whom stopped to greet and pet Weiner.

“The Unity Spiritual Center is very open and supportive of all people,” Hubert said.

Full Spectrum Community Outreach founder and president Tim Bortner said the festival began to satisfy a need for outreach and community involvement.

Bortner added, “There was a need for an organization like us that provides outreach and a bridge between us and the community, so that people have services and support when they need it.”