Columbiana County hosts second annual pride celebration

LISBON, Ohio (WKBN) — Columbiana County Pride hosted its second annual LGBTQ pride celebration on Saturday.

The celebration took place about a month after other area events, which organizer Joey Shilot says was to prevent competing with other local celebrations.

“We really didn’t want to compete with any other local prides, and we wanted to use other local prides to get our name out there since we just started last year,” Shilot said.

Last year’s inaugural event in Wellsville drew nearly 700 people. So this year, it was moved to a bigger location in Lisbon.

“Already today, we’ve seen more people now than we did at this time last year. So, we’re starting out great,” Shilot said at the celebration.

Organizers planned a day full of entertainment and outreach, but their top priority was safety.

“One of our biggest things is to make sure that everybody that comes through our doors is safe. There’s a lot of the LGBTQ community who’s like — they’re not out yet, or they still live in a lot of fear,” said organizer Samantha Beyer.

A private security team, the sheriff’s office and volunteer greeters acted as three levels of security at the venue. Organizers say they created the event to make people feel included right in their home county.

“We had to create the community for our community because we didn’t want young people to feel the way we did when we were their age — alone and not represented in the county,” Shilot said.