District of Love March celebrates Washington’s diversity
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Local residents band together to support immigrants and toast DC’s unique local cultures
After last fall’s presidential election, Berenice Pernalete saw fear sweep through her Northwest D.C. neighborhood. She knew she had to do something to spread love. For starters, she looked no further than to her next-door neighbors Scott Goldstein and Liz Bergner.
Maintaining supportive relationships with neighbors seemed more important than ever, so they joined forces to organize the District of Love March taking place tomorrow, Mar. 11.
“The Love March is essentially an invitation to all of the community … to come together, celebrate our diversity, and stand united in support of each other,” Pernalete says.
The election, she adds, “was the catalyst that motivated us to go beyond donating and beyond being a good citizen to actually doing something more tangible in support of diversity and inclusion.”
The march has three main goals: to send a message of visibility and celebrate diversity; highlight local, minority owned businesses along Georgia Avenue NW; and stand behind local and tangible volunteering opportunities in the District.
This march even has its own motto: “Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, we stand together as neighbors.”
Pernalete, who started working on tomorrow’s festivities about a month ago, says organizers expect around 250 to 1,000 people to turn out tomorrow.
“The interesting thing is that we are not activists by nature. We are not march organizers who have been organizing marches forever and ever and ever in D.C.,” Pernalete says. “All of us became organizers and activists post these elections.”
Marchers will gather tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. at the Emery Recreation Center and head down Georgia Avenue to Petworth Metro Station and Bruce Monroe Park before wrapping up in the early afternoon at the U-Street/African American Civil War Memorial Metro Station, where nonprofits such as Sanctuary DMV, D.C. Fair Food and La Clinica Del Pueblo will have information available about their services and the risks faced by the communities they serve. (More Info.)
Organizers also want to support local DC nonprofit groups and businesses. So sales of District of Love t-shirts designed by Pernalete will go to Many Languages One Voice (MLOV), The D.C. Fair Food Campaign and the United Workers of Washington (Trabajadores Unidos de Washington DC). Marchers will also receive 10% discount coupons for businesses the march highlights.
In addition to Pernalete, Bergner, and Goldstein, the event’s lead organizers are Mandy Toomey, Angelica Guerrero, Lita Trejo and Michie Grant. Pernalete stressed that organizers want the march to be a festive celebration of diversity and is not tied to any political party.
“All of this is happening with a spirit of celebration. At the rally and at the closure of the march there are going to be performances, poetry readings and other celebratory events,” she says.
“Contra el odio, el Amor”.
—Quincey Tickner and Maria Carrasco
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