Fingerlakes Pagan Pride Day 2004 Statistics
Attendance: 300 Patrons
Food Donations: 243 Pounds of Food
Our FLPPD 2004 Sponsors:
Ditchwitch, Linda Hanley, Sabra Waden, Northeast Council of W.I.C.C.A. Dragon Moon Creations, Janelle Olmstead, Heidi Gleber, Sharon Balestra Shelly O'Brien, John Sywulski, Coyote's Den, The Root Cellar, Natures Star Rite of Passage, Psychic's Thyme, Something Else Studio, Awake The Witch The Gift Garden, The Steel Source, Ski Country, Tri-County Jazzercise Rose Corner Bakery, Unique Toy Shop, and Pagan Church of the Sacred Pentacle
Thank you for a successful and well received event!
September 9, 2004 - St. Mary's Food Cupboard Accepts FLPPD Food Donations
Letter from Saint Mary's Food Cupboard
"Dear Heidi,
Thank you for the generous donation from Pagan Pride. The 243 lbs. will be used to help
feed the hungry in our community. We gave food to two hundred and four households during the months
of July and Aug. We give two bags of nutritious canned goods to each family, we use all that is
donated to us. Thank you so much -
Sincerely,
St. Mary's Food Cupboard"
August 28, 2004 - R-News coverage of the 2004 FLPPD
Pagan Pride Shown Every Witch-Way
by Leah George/Sarah Freligh
Published Aug 28, 2004 by R-News
In this tent, they were learning about a little candle magic. At this table, they were selling wiccan artwork.
It was all part of the first Finger Lakes Pagan Pride Festival Saturday at Canandaigua's Baker Park.
For many in attendance, the festival was an education.
"It's very interesting to see all the people," said Barbara Gandy, of Penfield. "You can't pooh-pooh it, because you don't know enough about it."
Heidi Gleber, the festival's coordinator, is a witch. She says increasing public awareness and tolerance for this polytheistic, earth-based religion is the point of festivals like this one.
"We're your neighbors and you deal with us every day," Gleber said. "We're just regular people like everyone else."
While pagans talked to people about their beliefs inside the festival, Christian protesters voiced theirs to people on the way out.
"The Bible talks about sorcery and witchcraft, that it's an abomination to God," said John Marcus, of Calvary Chapel. "They're doing what they feel is right in their own eyes. I'm just here to share the truth."
Gleber says casting spells is actually a pagan form of prayer. "The most common spells will be for healing for healing the earth."
According to Gleber, legitimate pagan pride festivals are held in public places and include open rituals meant to promote community. "These pagans"--she gestured--"are collecting food to give to a local food pantry."
The Canandaigua Salvation Army declined the donations, so the food collected Saturday will go to St. Mary's Church.
"When we called St. Mary's and I spoke with the woman who heads up the social ministries food cupboard, she said thank you, thank you for thinking of us," Gleber said. "That's the reaction that I would expect."
As far as Gleber's other expectation of having people know more about her religion, Barbara Gandy and her husband say they're walking away with just that.
"You hear a lot of, oh, they're scary and they're really not," Barbara Gandy said.
"They're just like us," she laughed.
August 20, 2004 - Democrat and Chronicle coverage of the 2004 FLPPD
Pagans say they want acceptance, fair treatment
by Denise-Marie Santiago
Published Aug 20, 2004 by The Democrat and Chronicle
(August 20, 2004) By their own admission, these two stay-at-home moms never imagined themselves as crusaders, let alone witches.
Heidi Gleber and Shelly O'Brien were just trying to break down prejudices against their religion when they started organizing next weekend's first Finger Lakes Pagan Pride Day in Canandaigua.
They turned to the American Civil Liberties Union when they felt city officials were giving them the runaround about using a public park for the event. Call it principle, or just an attempt to make the world a better place for their pagan children.
"It was kind of scary because it was, like, we're taking on something big here," says O'Brien, 35, of Canandaigua, a married mother of three. "We're taking on city hall, literally. But you can't back down just because it's city hall."
We're sitting in Gleber's home in East Bloomfield, where she lives with her husband of 22 years and their five children. A dozen or so pagans meet here regularly for holidays, full moons, new moons and the like.
Gleber, 40, has a Lutheran, Methodist and Jewish religious heritage. Her husband is on the vestry of his Episcopal church.
But Gleber turned to paganism two years ago after getting a tattoo of a star and a moon on her forehead, common symbols of the religion.
The tattoo, she says, reminded her of a childhood memory: She was sitting alone one night in her parents' garden, mulling over boy problems, when along came a goddess to offer aid.
The adult Gleber then started reading books on Wicca, a pre-Christian nature religion that honors gods and goddesses. She met O'Brien, a Wiccan since 1987, through a group on the Internet.
The two now teach classes on Wicca, a denomination of paganism, at Gleber's home. The idea of having their own pagan pride day, which has been celebrated locally for years, was just natural.
But there was resistance. Gleber wanted to donate nonperishable food collected at the event to a local nonprofit that serves the needy. The group said no thanks.
The pagans successfully offered the donations to the food cupboard at St. Mary Church in Canandaigua. The Rev. Thomas Mull of the Roman Catholic church says everyone from Scouts to postal workers, from Methodists to Episcopalians, contributes to the charity.
"It would be inconsistent," Mull says, "to say we'll take it from everybody but you."
The women say city officials were balking at their request to hold the pagan event at Canandaigua's Baker Park. The two sides disagree on why.
Gleber says the city first told her no because the event involved religion; then it said no because the request involved park space reserved for sports.
That's when the duo called in the ACLU. It contended that the city was using discretionary powers that violated the pagans' right to free speech.
"If she wants to promote that the world is flat, she can do that," says the ACLU's Scott Forsyth, referring to Gleber.
Scott Smith, an attorney for the city, says the issue was never about religion but about timing: The group wanted to use an area limited during the summer to sporting events. "If the pope had wanted to do something at Baker Park in August, we would have given him the same answer."
Ultimately, he says, the City Council allowed the Aug. 28 festival in the park because the pagans had already scheduled events there.
O'Brien wants visitors to see that they're just regular people trying to make the world a more understanding place. Now that's worth taking on city hall.