Utah Pride Festival 2008

Salt Lake City, UT: The annual ‘Dyke March’ was created six years ago by Salt Lake City women who wanted to raise visibility and awareness about lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women and men in Utah during the Utah Pride Festival.  This year, Dyke March participants are meeting at City Creek Park on the corner of State Street & North Temple for a rally at 4:00pm on Saturday, June 7, and will march down State Street at 4:30pm to the Utah Pride Festival grounds, located at Washington Square.

Each year, the Dyke March is organized by sWerve, a lesbian-focused social and civic service affiliate group of the Utah Pride Center.  This year’s Dyke March Coordinator is Brandie Balken, who was one of the original organizers of the event.  Balken has attended the march every year since its inception, and explains “we had about 130 brave souls walking for visibility at the first Dyke March, and last year we were close to 700 – truly a force to be reckoned with.”  Balken welcomes women of all ethnicities, orientations, classes, faiths, ages, and abilities to march at the 2008 Dyke March to assert that women’s rights are civil rights.

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sWerve is an affiliate of the Utah Pride Center, and the Utah Pride Festival is a program of the Utah Pride Center.  sWerve supports charitable organizations and programs within the queer community and the community at large.  sWerve’s mission is to strengthen our community by promoting positive images of queer, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women in Utah.

 Download the complete press release.