Rainbow Bazaar in Starkville brings LGBTQIA+ community together
The second annual Rainbow Bazaar is meant to create a safe space for the community to come together around local vendors creations.
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – The South can be a hard place to live for LGBTQIA+ people.
But Josh Herrington, the Rainbow Bazaar festival coordinator, said places like Starkville can be a safe haven for them.
“There are pockets of welcoming communities, and Starkville is one of them,” Herrington said. “But I don’t think a lot of people know that.”
To find community in these towns, people need places to come together.
That’s where the second annual Rainbow Bazaar comes in.
Parker Bridges, an attendee, said the local community feels like home.
“It’s just like a place of belonging, friendship, family, but also, you know, it’s like home away from home,” Bridges said. “Those of us from out of state. It’s like kind of a place that we can come back to and find meaning in and purpose in.”
Josie Begley, an attendee, said finding community means the world to them.
“When you go out into the world, and you try to do your own thing it’s easy to feel alone,” Begley said. “It’s easy to feel like you don’t belong. But then you have this community of people that you can come back to, and they just accept you with open arms.”
But the Rainbow Bazaar is not just about coming together, it’s also a place of self-expression.
Like jeweler Khalessi Watts with House of Khalessi.
“We are destined to basically express ourselves and we need something to express ourselves in,” Watts said. “And without this space It would be sadder place. It would be a sadder world. Sadder town. We just need each other as much as possible right now. And this is the perfect place to have it.”
Begley said the local support is heartwarming.
“It fills me with hope that there are still people who will come and show their support,” Begley said. “Like no matter what’s going on in the world we still have people who are trying to trying to do what’s right and try to be themselves.”
Herrington said showing support for this community shows them that there is a place in the world for them.
“The more we can show the support for that community, the more we can love on them, the more they’ll, you know, understand that people do care for them,” Herrington said. “There is a place in the world for them.”
More than 30 vendors were in attendance at this year’s Rainbow Bazaar.
