Madison Pride and MAGIC Picnic
The acronym MAGIC stands for Madison Area Gay Interim Committee and was also formed partially in response to Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign of the late 1970s/early 1980s.
Mutual friends connected O'Brien and Jacobsen, and their meeting resulted in the formation of the Madison Pride March Committee.
Both of these marches were accompanied by several days of associated events, including concerts and workshops, and an exhibition of a major portion of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
The marches also featured the very visible support of local government officials, and a wide variety of community nonprofits and for-profit businesses, and formed the foundation for coalition-building efforts in years to come with other groups working for civil rights and social justice.
In a city and county that had already seen more than a decade of multiple pioneering successful openly lesbian and gay candidates for local office, the marches also had a marked positive political effect, including boosting efforts at the level of Madison Council and Dane County Board to pass legislation providing some measure of domestic partner benefits.
In general, the successful organizing efforts that surrounded these initial marches also provided a positive example of what Madison's LGBT community members could accomplish working together—laying the groundwork for the political mobilization and coalition-building work that would eventually lead to the election, from Madison, of the nation's first openly lesbian Congresswoman.
The first march's rally featured a variety of distinguished speakers, including Madison Alderperson Ricardo Gonzalez (the nation's first openly gay Latino-American elected official), State Rep. David Clarenbach (principal author of Wisconsin's 1982 first-in-the-nation LGBT rights law), and then Dane County Supervisor Tammy Baldwin.
The second march's rally included a keynote speech by Urvashi Vaid, then director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Pride Weekend traditionally consists of the Madison LGBT community center OutReach's annual dinner on Friday (in which community leaders and allies receive recognition for their work), University of Wisconsin–Madison GLBT Alumni breakfast on Saturday or Sunday morning (which also includes a ceremony recognizing distinguished LGBT alumni), the MAGIC picnic on Saturday afternoon, followed by the Pride Parade on Sunday morning and a repeat of the picnic on Sunday afternoon.
In 2010, nightclub Plan B (and successor club Prism) created a festival for the community that runs in July during national Pride month that has a focus on music.
On August 10, 2014, the very first OutReach Pride Parade made its way down Willimason St, up to the Capitol Square and culminating in a rally and music.
