This year, LGBT Pride will be much different than before.
Pride celebrations scheduled for May and June have either been cancelled or postponed to a much latter date. Some of these Pride celebrations have moved to a more virtual space, ior have been reinvented through other engaging means.
That has not stopped many companies and organizations from being creative during this Pride month.
Case in point, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced their commitment to celebrate Pride this month through their Gay And Lesbian Alliance employee resource group across the company.
FCA GALA’s chairperson, Greg Hawkins, spoke to the ERG’s plans on this year’s Pride month. “[W]e have been working diligently for the last two months to identify and plan for opportunities to engage and stay connected with our members and affiliates as we watched the Impacts of the Coronavirus on daily life,” said Hawkins. “As more and more pride cancellations started to become the reality we promptly started planning for a pride engagement that is virtual.”
It all starts with a new slogan for this year’s Pride month at FCA: Our Pride, Our Drive, Never Cancelled. Part of this year’s Pride activities at FCA will include having GALA members and FCA employees “post their pictures with their FCA vehicles demonstrating pride in their work, and their company, and our products,” explained Hawkins.
Last year, FCA GALA introduced the Jeep and Ram brands to join Fiat at the front of Motor City Pride in Detroit. The GALA group marched alongside a wrapped Fiat 124 Spider and 500X, a wrapped Ram and a Jeep Gladiator.
This year, those three brands will participate in GALA’s month-long program at FCA’s headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan and other North American facilities. Eventually, FCA and GALA would like to see all other brands participate in future Pride month activities.
FCA has earned a perfect 100% score in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index for the past several years. This company has been on vanguard of providing support and creating human resource policies for the LGBT employees. According to Hawkins, GALA has been working with their HR department in place that “support [FCA’s] Trans+ employees to ensure that any needs they may have during transition are addressed.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic sent on-site employees to work from home, Hawkins explained that FCA had to “innovate and propelled the organization to put into place virtual means for the global employees stay connected.” This spearheaded a project to create an internal community page so “every affinity group and BRG has a venue to share with the organization their activities providing a robust venue for communication and discussion,” explained Hawkins.
As for other automotive manufacturers, we have not heard of any other initiatives for this year’s Pride month celebrations – virtual or otherwise – as of going to press.
On behalf of the team here at GayWheels.com, we wish you a happy Pride month! Celebrate it virtually or creatively this year!