“The people of Orlando are all coming together once again to support one another,' Cat Ridgeway, an Orlando native and University of Central Florida student, told NBC OUT. But as one might expect, emotions were mixed - a celebration of the community on one hand and the lingering struggle to make sense of June's tragic shooting on the other. Dave GiesbrechtĪn estimated 150,000 people across all ages, ethnicities and gender and sexual identities packed the rainbow-colored area surrounding Lake Eola on Saturday. Every year since then it has started to grow and grow and grow.' A view of some of the people who attended the Orlando Pride Parade. 'In 2005, there was a group of people that finally said you know what we need to have Pride in Orlando. “Two decades ago there were politicians that said we don’t want any kind of Pride in our city,' Jeff Prystajko, Director of Marketing and Communications for Come Out With Pride told NBC OUT.
