SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 News)-This year’s Utah Pride Festival commemorates two important anniversaries in LGBTQ+ history.

The first is a movement that started in Salt Lake City 44 years ago with the first informal gathering in a park in 1974, and the other is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which was a series of demonstrations and protests by the LGBTQ+ community to defend their rights to exist in society.

The Utah Pride Festival is a major fundraising event for the Utah Pride Center, which provides critical and life-saving mental health services, as well as wellness and social programs, to the greater LGBTQ+ community. This year’s theme is EXIST. RESIST. PERSIST.

The festival is June 1 and 2 in Washington Square in Salt Lake City.

For more information, visit www.utahpridecenter.org.

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