A day of pride and celebration. DG PrideFest returns to Fishel Park on Saturday

For the second year in a row, the DG PrideFest, a community event aimed at bringing the community together, will be held at Fishel Park

“You Belong,” the the theme of this year’s fest, will be held from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 7 at Fishel Park and is sponsored by Equality Downers Grove (EQDG) along with other local organizations.

This year’s event will include a food truck, music, children’s activities and a large number of community organizations including health/wellbeing providers, counseling groups, the DuPage County Health Department, the League of Women Voters, religious organizations and even a new animal hospital, according to Enrique Reyes, Equality Downers Grove co-chair.

These organizations will all have on hand interactive activities to help engage attendees with partner organizations, he added.

“We had 400 people come last year, and we are hoping to beat that number,” Reyes said.

Events like PrideFest are important to show support from the community, Reyes said.

“It really helps show the broader community that there is our cause and our organization,” he said.

“We work a lot with Youth Outlook, an Illinois-based social service agency dedicated supporting LGBTQ+ youth, to come together, locally here in Downers Grove,” Reyes said. “Our work allows that center to stay open.”

Youth Outlook has a drop-in center in Downers Grove as well as several other communities.

​This year’s PrideFest includes a wide range of community support including the Downers Grove Park District and the Downers Grove Junior Woman’s Club who is sponsoring this year’s official PrideFest 2025 T-shirt.

Equality Downers Grove began in 2017 and became a full-fledged nonprofit in 2022. And for the last several years, the organization has been steadily growing as has the fest.

“We had a few LGBTQ Pride picnics at Fishel Park,” Kathryn Deiss, EQDG co-chair, said of the event’s early days.

About four years ago, “We began to add more Pride events and began collaborations with the Downers Grove Public Library and the Downers Grove First United Methodist Church,” she said.

In 2024, EQDG launched its first official PrideFest in Downers Grove.

“This year we are doing much the same, but bigger,” Deiss said.

“This year more than ever, we have heard from other community organizations that this event is really important,” she said. “One of the first things the current Trump administration did was to issue a series of executive orders that were aggressively anti-LGBTQ, especially the trans community.”

“There are all kinds of legitimate polls that show that the majority of the country support and/or accepts the LGBTQIA+ community including the trans community,” EQDG Treasurer Dave Humphreys said.

“The trend over the last 20 to 30 years has been in the direction of accepting and affirming these people, us.”

“It is a very stressful and polarizing time. We have neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend,” Humphreys said. “And the current political climate accentuates that.”

“We like to think of the PrideFest as not just an EQDG event, but it truly is a community event, led by EQDG,” he said. “A day of fun and to celebrate.”

“This is a true desire for a cohesive inclusive community and against divisiveness,” Deiss added.

June also signifies the start of the creation of window art in downtown Downers Grove to celebrate Pride Month—something that has been occurring for the last several years.

“People come from many different suburbs to see the artwork,” Deiss said. “It is great to see the different kinds of art and the messaging that goes along with it.”

Other events sponsored by EQDG include an annual One Book One Town and a Spring Tea Dance Fundraiser.

“PrideFest is one day of celebration, but LGBTQ rights are 365 days a year 24/7 important. It is human rights,” Deiss said.