Photo: Boreal Community Media

By Laura Durenberger-Grunow - Boreal Community Media - January 30, 2025

The Cook County Pride Committee has announced its annual Pride celebration on June 14, 2025, at Harbor Park in Grand Marais. According to a release emailed by the Committee, the event is the region's largest Pride celebration and aims to foster a safe and inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ residents and visitors of Cook County. The event coincides with Pride celebrations held in June around the US, which honors the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the LGBTQ+ community in response to a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village. 

The day-long June 14th event in Grand Marais's Harbor Park will include a rally and march, as well as family-friendly options, wellness, and community gatherings such as yoga, dancing, singing, drag performances, arts and crafts, and live music. An after-dark DJ dance party will conclude the day. Other events are also planned throughout the month. The full schedule will be released in spring 2025. 

During the 2024 June event, a bomb threat was received via email around 10:30 a.m., directed at attendees and organizers of the events being held that day. The threat mentioned a bomb placed in three specific buildings in downtown Grand Marais. The Cook County Sheriff's Office was notified and conducted a precautionary sweep of the buildings, all of which yielded negative results. The Crow Wing County Bomb Squad was also notified and determined that the Sheriff's Office did everything that the Bomb Squad would have done. 

In a press release, the Cook County Pride Committee said that they were made aware of the bomb threat on the morning of Saturday, June 15, during the event. In addition to active communication and collaboration with local law enforcement leading up to the event, "Part of our extensive planning involved designated security leaders from our local community and professional collaborators brought in for support," the release said. It was determined there was no safety threat, and the day-long events continued as planned. (The Pride Committee also hired Minneapolis-based Sequeerity, "a de-escalation team that is owned and operated by queer and POC womxn whose goal is to create and maintain safe spaces for everyone, especially for the LGBTQIA+ community.") 

The Cook County Sheriff's Office and the FBI investigated and determined the threats, known as "swatting," were Russian and possibly bot-generated. In May 2024, the FBI and Homeland Security issued a notice warning of possible threats to LGBTQA events from "foreign terrorist organizations (FTOS) or their supporters."

Regarding security for the 2025 event, the committee told Boreal Community Media they will utilize similar security measures as in previous years. "We are pleased to say that the security measures we had in place last year functioned exactly as they were meant to, so we will use those same measures this year," adding, "We do always have a security plan in place and we do our very best to make our events safe."

In addition to the June 14th events, the committee also announced a Potluck/Meet & Greet planned for the evening of March 15th. This event will include a presentation from the committee, followed by karaoke and dancing. More details will be released in the near future. 

To learn more about Cook County Pride, visit: https://www.cookcountypride.org

The Cook County Pride Committee is a volunteer organization dedicated to creating public events that support the queer community. All are welcome to participate in the inclusive celebration.