The group’s request to close Melarkey Street through Sixth Street for the parade was unanimously approved by Winnemucca city council members during a meeting on Tuesday. Christina Basso, Misty Huff, Shawn Dixon and Kat Dixon are planning Winnemucca's first Pride parade and festival. She is also the sole LGBTQ member in the Winnemucca Pride planning group. Shawn Dixon said she has been an out lesbian since 1991 and has been married to her wife for nearly 23 years, with whom she raised their daughter in Winnemucca. “That's it right there - just love and acceptance and diversity and equality and all of those things that I think are human human rights.” “The significance is to show everybody that it's OK to be you and to be loved and love who you want,” Shawn Dixon said.
What began as a plan to gather a small group to walk down a street in the center of Winnemucca waving a rainbow flag representing the LGBTQ community has evolved into a weekend full of events complete with parade floats, a drag queen show and a festival with vendors from local businesses and others as far as Carson City and Lake Tahoe. Together, they are planning to host a Pride parade and festival on July 16 and 17 in the town with less than 8,000 people. Now, she is joined in her efforts by her daughter, Kat Dixon, preschool teacher Christina Basso and Misty Huff, who works at a local grocery store. We have to have this, and I can do it, and I asked a few friends,” Dixon said during an interview with The Nevada Independent. “I was sitting outside one night after being sick from chemo, and it just hit me that it had to be done.
Shawn Dixon, a Winnemucca resident and owner of a local nail salon, said organizing a Pride parade celebrating members of the LGBTQ community in the rural Nevada town is something she’s “dreamed of for years and years,” but didn’t think she could accomplish.īut receiving a cancer diagnosis in March 2020 spurred her to pursue her idea in earnest this year.