Happy 30th Pride, San Diego! It’s hard to believe that it’s been 30 years since a group of local activists and average, everyday citizens banded together to bring our community its first Pride celebration. It’s even tougher to comprehend just how different — and difficult — times were for the organizers and participants of that first Pride parade. Times truly have changed in three relatively short decades.

San Diego, and most of America, was a decidedly less tolerant place for members of the GLBT community in 1974. Organizers of that first San Diego Pride parade overcame many obstacles and much public opposition when they marched down Broadway and up Sixth Avenue — some with bags over their heads to conceal their identities — as proud members of our community. Parade participants had to endure insults and threats as they marched. And only three people were willing to speak at the rally at the conclusion of the parade for fear of being outed publicly by television cameras taping the event. Sadly, two of the three organizers of this groundbreaking event, Tom Homann and Jess Jessop, are no longer with us. Only Nicole Murray Ramirez — fittingly named as this year’s Pride Parade Grand Marshal — is still with us, fighting for our civil rights.

In sharp contrast to today’s events, the actions of this small band of community members were more a defiant political statement and less a celebration. These folks, our friends and neighbors, were true trailblazers.

Over the past decade, Pride celebrations worldwide have grown exponentially in size and scope. Today, it’s not unheard of for some Pride events to draw in excess of a half million participants. Here in San Diego, when you’re joined by more than 100,000 parade watchers along University and Sixth avenues, it’s easy to forget just how tough it was to get to this point. In fact, I’d venture that many who will attend this year’s rally, parade and/or festival, will have no concept of just how revolutionary a gay pride parade actually was in early 1970s America.

Knowing the history of one’s own community can be a source of empowerment and strength. For me, this point was underscored recently at the dedication of the Wall of Honor at the San Diego GLBT Community Center.

You can’t help but swell up with pride for our community after reading the biographical descriptions of each of those who have been immortalized on The Center’s wall.

There is so much history on this wall; so much love and compassion in these lives. There is a profound sense of courage and triumph in each of the stories behind these names.

I am so very proud that San Diego’s GLBT Community Center is the first center of its kind in the nation to lift up the spirits of its deceased heroes by placing their names on a permanent Wall of Honor. Ours is a wall where all in the community can come to honor their memory and bask in the glory of their accomplishments and convictions.

We must remember these heroes. It’s important that we honor their contributions and continue their legacy. Because it’s on their shoulders that we stand. These are our founding mothers and fathers, our brothers and our sisters. They are the backbone of our community.

This is a watershed moment in American history for our community. Once again, we find ourselves at the center of a political storm, poised to be used as pawns in a political game of election-year chess which sets to divide our country on the basis of our sexual orientation.

But this time, we can’t lose. And we won’t lose!

It’s precisely because of our local GLBT pioneers, and hundreds of others just like them in big cities and rural towns across this country, who have gone before us and blazed this trail, that we find ourselves at this amazing point in our community’s history. We will never go back, and we will never retreat.

Because if every person who marched in that first Pride parade or who is listed on the Wall of Honor were still with us today — and I know they are in spirit — they’d be leading the charge, urging us to fight on until we get what we deserve: our place at the table, and the equal rights guaranteed to each and every one of us under the Constitution that governs this great nation of which we are important and contributing partners.

We must never forget the people who got us where we are today. They are our heroes. And we must honor their legacy every step of the way.

With a history as rich as this, there is nothing we can’t achieve.