Click on the image below to buy tickets!!
Questions?
Email us- thepintaprideproject@gmail.com
Call us-
847-420-4370
All photo credit- Annette Leibovitz
Sign up for the 2025 parade!
Fill out this form and we will contact you in January to discuss participation for the parade which will be June 1st.
The 2024 parade featured 95 entries, 2,000 participants and a crowd of thousands! Reach out to thepintaprideproject@gmail.com for details to see more photos!
BG Pride shirts available in adult S-3XL and youth sizes S-XL. Email thepintaprideproject@gmail.com
2024 SPONSORS
DIAMOND PRESENTING ($10,000)
Zebra Technologies
GOLD ($5,000)
Annette Leibovitz Mitzvah Photography
WINTRUST
SILVER ($2,500)
WIPFLI
IKEA Schaumburg
BRONZE ($1,000)
Mundelein LGBT Alliance and Allies
The Law Firm of Jack M. Shapiro
Sage Stone Counseling
Balloons by Tommy
Our Saviour’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Arlington Heights
Reverie Dance Academy
Congregation Beth Shalom
Compass Health Center
Stericycle
Kingswood United Methodist Church
Elevated Entertainment
BMO
School of Rock, Arlington Heights
First United Methodist Church of Arlington Heights
Shir Hadash
FRIENDS OF BG PRIDE ($500)
Leslie Silverman @Properties
Temple Beth El
Lake County Democrats
The Gerber Group with Coldwell Banker Realty
Glen’s Friends
Bill and Robin Eisenstot
Little Bird Psychotherapy
Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirirt
Veterinary Emergency Group of Buffalo Grove
College of American Pathologists
Illinois State Representative Daniel Didech
GPAD Greater Palatine Area Democrats
Wheeling Township Democratic Organization
Touchstone Therapy Center
EQUALITY ILLINOIS
Buffalo Grove Trustee Joanne Johnson
PNC Bank Long Grove
Signarama Buffalo Grove
GiveNKind
Waukegan Friends
9Round Fitness
Trustee David Weidenfeld and wife, Susan
Congregation Beth Judea
Goodwill
League of Women Voters AH, Mt. Prospect, BG
Temple Jeremiah
Congregation Hakafa
Original Bagel & Bialy Buffalo Grove
Shelter Inc.
Studio Phoenix Arlington Heights
Thrown Elements Pottery
Andrew Chusid, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management
Strauss & Hoyt, LLC
Congregation BJBE
Donate for Love. Donate for Acceptance. Donate for Visibility.
Donate for Love. Donate for Acceptance. Donate for Visibility.
All of the money that The Pinta Pride Project uses to throw events is donated by our amazing community and sponsors. Any events are to highlight, celebrate, and normalize the LGBTQIA+ community in a family friendly way.
Molly Pinta and Tanja Babich discuss pride on ABC 7 on the release date (October 3, 2023) of the book they have both contributed to, Dear Rebel!
Tanja and Molly sign Dear Rebel books at Three Avenues Book shop in Chicago in October.
Both books are available on Amazon and also at Barnes and Noble!
Check out the incredible Rebel Girls series here!
This is a story about thousands of people turning darkness into light.
It’s a story about the pull and the power of human connection. It’s a story about the world evolving toward love.
And it’s a story about my childhood friend Sarah Bach.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a campaign to send holiday cards to LGBTQ folks who’ve been shunned by their families — who aren’t invited home, who’ve been cut off from the warmth of tradition — because of who they are or who they love. The campaign was launched by Carolyn and Molly Pinta, co-creators of the Pinta Pride Project, an organization that raises awareness and support in suburban Northwest Chicago communities for LGBTQ people. Pinta Pride Project was born in 2019 when Molly Pinta, Carolyn’s daughter, organized a pride parade in Buffalo Grove — its first, and now an annual event for the Chicago suburb.
The card-writing campaign launched the day after the Club Q shooting last month in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Pinta was inspired by Home for the Holidays, a 12,000-strong Facebook group that serves as a safe space for LGBTQ people who can’t, actually, go home for the holidays. Pinta started a spreadsheet with addresses of members from the group who wanted to receive holiday cards from kindhearted strangers. She set up card-writing parties and added information to the Pinta Pride Project website (buffalogrovepride.com) for others who wanted to take part.
“More than ever, those of us who feel safe to do so have got to open our mouths,” she told me. “Because people are hurting.”
As soon as my column published, I started getting emails from people who wanted in. Pinta started hearing from high schools and youth groups and grandmothers and her state senator, Adriane Johnson — all of whom wanted in. Her kitchen table quickly filled with cards for her to address, stamp and mail.
When I checked in with her 10 days before Christmas, she had collected 2,134 cards.
A hundred of them were from my friend Sarah.
Sarah and I grew up together, though we haven’t seen each other since middle school. She finished high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, went on to study music in college and graduate school and landed a gig playing the French horn in a South Beach, Florida, orchestra.
“Like Triple-A baseball for classical music,” she said.
We reconnected through Facebook a few years ago. So I know she’s living in California now, and I know she has two sons, and I know that one of her sons, Lincoln, has osteosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that starts in the cells that form bones. Lincoln’s began in his tibia when he was 10 years old.
I know Lincoln has had 12 surgeries. I know his cancer was in remission for 2½ years, and then it returned in March. This time in his arm. I know he just started high school.
And I know Sarah’s heart, like Lincoln’s heart, has been through the wringer. Her heart knows fear and despair and the cruelty of cancer. They all sit there, taking up space, next to love and hope and joy.
She read about the card-writing campaign on my Facebook page and found room in her heart, too, for kindness. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have 200 Christmas cards in the garage like the good Midwestern hoarder I am,’” she said.
She grabbed a pile and started writing. She filled out 100 and posted a photo of her stack before putting it in the mail to Pinta.
“I sign them ‘Sarah from California,’” she told me, “So people know they’ve got support from all over, from people they don’t even know.”
Lincoln also gets cards from strangers, mostly through a couple of cancer groups they belong to. One neighbor writes him a letter every week.
“When he was first diagnosed when he was 10, we’d get cards with a cat hanging out like, ‘Hang in there!’ We’d read them and chuckle together,” Sarah said. “Now he’s a hardened teenager. My hope is they still get in there, show him people are thinking about him.”
“There,” meaning his heart.
She hopes her stack of cards gets in someone else’s heart. Someone who’s feeling the sting of sorrow or cruelty or loneliness or whatever specific, unique mix of emotions sets in when you don’t know belonging and acceptance at home.
“I hope they get oodles of cards and I hope it gives them a good-old happy cry,” Sarah said. “Happy cries are the best. I hope they have a moment where they feel hopeful, even if it’s just a moment.”
She hopes people hang on to them.
“And look back at them,” she said, “when they need a boost to keep going in life.”
She knows, better than many of us, that a card is not a cure.
But it’s a point of light, and we need those to guide us — back from despair, back to hope, back to each other. Which is always where we belong.
Heidi Stevens is a Tribune News Service columnist. You can reach her at heidikstevens@gmail.com, find her on Twitter @heidistevens13 or join her Heidi Stevens’ Balancing Act Facebook group.
View highlights from the 2022 BG Pride Parade. Watch now→
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BG Pride Parade 2023
We’ll be back for the next annual Buffalo Grove Pride Parade on June 4, 2023.
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Pintas on the TODAY Show
Live on the TODAY Show, we reconnected with the absolutely amazing drag queen, Nina West!
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Support our Work
While our parade only happens once a year, you can support our work year-round.
Molly tells her story at Pride fest in Chicago.
July 2022.
Molly Pinta, a 17-year-old student at Stevenson High School started the whole project! At the age of 12, she attended Aurora's Inaugural Pride Parade, and she was inspired to create one for her home town.
She and her family have long been advocates for social justice issues in their own town, but having many gay family members and friends, pride is the closest to home.
Molly was a Youth Ambassador for the Human Rights Campaign, the winner of the 2020 Illinois NOW Young Feminist Award, and a very serious honor student hoping to receive a stellar college education. Although she will always support the Pinta Pride Project, she wants to work with exotic animals, specifically reptiles, and is the owner of two tree frogs, two geckos and a ball python named St. Patrick.
Molly’s moxie and confidence—combined with her determination to crowdfund Buffalo Grove’s inaugural pride parade—caught the attention of 2019 Chicago Pride Parade officials, who named the 13-year-old this year’s Youth Grand Marshal, calling her “a shining example of the hard work and sacrifices” of LGBTQ activists throughout history.
— Tony Peregrin, Chicago Reader
We cannot do what we do without you.
The Pinta Pride Project was inspired whole heartedly by the community that it serves. We aim to increase LGBT+ awareness within suburban communities and hope you will join us on this journey. If you are new to our organization or been with us since day one, thank you. Your support is vital to the growth of our community—we’re glad you’re here.