Chicago Pride parade canceled for second straight year amid COVID-19 surge

The Chicago Pride Parade was canceled for a second year in a row as the U.S. continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coordinator for the 2021 parade, Tim Frye, announced in a statement on Wednesday that the event, which was set to take place on Oct. 3, would be canceled because organizers did not feel it could go on “safely.”

“To use the words of a song from the 60’s: ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’; we really wanted and hoped that there could be a parade in 2021. We don’t feel, though, that we can do it safely for everyone in the parade and the people watching. We must cancel the parade for the second year,” Frye said in a statement.

Frye said the decision was made with the safety of parade participants and spectators in mind.

“We felt that for the safety of both the people in the parade, and really the hundreds of thousands of people who crowd together to watch the parade, it was better if we postponed it, let’s say, until next June,” he said, according to The Chicago Tribune.

The cancellation comes after organizers previously announced that the parade would be delayed from the original date of June 26-27.

Frye said they initially decided to postpone the event with hopes that more people would be vaccinated in October.

He also said organizers thought holding the parade in early October would be a good introduction to LGBTQI+ History Month, and would allow them to recognize The Chicago Gender Society and honor a handful of individuals with close ties to the event.

Frye said the 2022 Chicago Pride Parade is already scheduled for June 26.

“There is a saying ‘Third Times a Charm,’ ” Frye wrote. “We’re going to believe that saying. We’re going to believe that in June, 2022 we are living in a far safer world than now. We intend to have the best, most joyous, fabulous, memorable Pride Parade ever. Count on it!”

The cancellation comes amid a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, driven largely by the highly infectious delta variant which has spread widely and is now the dominant strain in the U.S.

Chicago is currently seeing a spike in cases, with the seven-day rolling average number of cases steadily increasing from the beginning of July until mid-August, according to the city of Chicago’s COVID-19 dashboard.

That number, however, has since plateaued at around 475 infections.

The city issued an update to its travel advisory on Tuesday, recommending that unvaccinated travelers get tested for COVID-19 twice and quarantine for 10 days upon arrival.