Florida

In It to Win It

(9,589 posts) Sat Jun 1, 2024, 11:58 AM Jun 2024

Florida won't light bridges in rainbow colors. So Jacksonville's LGBTQ community did.

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2024/06/01/jacksonville-residents-shine-pride-lights-after-florida-stops-official-bridge-displa-them-on-bridges/73914750007/

As night fell Friday on downtown Jacksonville, 70 people lined the pedestrian walkway of the Main Street bridge and simultaneously turned on high-powered flashlights that lit the bridge in a ribbon of rainbow colors arching above the St. Johns River.

The display on the eve of Pride Month came after the state Department of Transportation decided the nearby Acosta Bridge would be lit in red, white and blue for state government's "Freedom Summer," meaning the Acosta's lighting system won't have rainbow lights for Pride Month as it did the previous three years.

So a group from the LGBTQ community and their supporters took the lighting into their own hands by illuminating the Main Street bridge with rainbow lights.

"I thought it came off great," said Jacksonville resident Matt McAllister, who helped organize the lighting event that came together in 48 hours.

"We thought we'd get 35 people for the bridge," he said. "We thought that would be a good night — that we'd get a couple of pictures and send them to our friends and say we did something. That this took off in such a way is so pleasing."