That place is Cherokee Street, and the parade, which has long been tied to the district's Cinco de Mayo celebration, is set for Saturday, May 4, at its usual starting time of 1:11 p.m., says Emily Thenhaus, director of the Cherokee Street Foundation.
Thenhaus says the cancelation announcement is due to a dispute between the Cherokee Street Foundation (a nonprofit that has close ties to the Cherokee Street Community Improvement District, and seeks to support events on Cherokee) and a much newer entity, People's Joy Parade LLC.
Records with the Missouri Secretary of State show the LLC was created one year ago by three people with long ties to Cherokee Street and the parade — Jenny Callen, Celia Shacklett and Holly Lammert.
Yesterday, Thenhaus says, the foundation informed the trio that it would not be paying it to run the parade. "It's a shift in how our resources are being used," she says. "Instead of funneling money to a couple of people and hoping that gets dispersed to artists, we're going to be giving out small artists' grants and directly funding the artists that way."
That apparently led the LLC's founders to yesterday's announcement, Thenhaus says. "When we offered what we'd offered in the past to facilitate artists' workshops and the parade, the feedback we got is that that's not enough," she says. "And because we're not earmarking a large grant for People's Joy Parade LLC, they concluded, 'This can't happen at all.'"
Callen, who is listed as the organizer on the LLC's registration, did not respond to an email seeking comment this morning. We'll update this post if we hear back.
But Thenhaus is certain that it can. She notes that the parade, which began in 2009, was always a grassroots neighborhood effort. An RFT story from 2015 details the origin story, which involved St. Louis artist Sarah Paulsen being inspired by a parade she saw in Peru, and returning to St. Louis intent on creating a community event that would bridge the cultural gaps in the Cherokee Street area. The story details the low-key beginnings, led by Paulsen and her friend Lyndsey Scott:
"In the spring of 2008, Scott circulated an email. The idea was to gather a small crew of merry-makers to scramble around the annual Cinco de Mayo festival in disguises. She wrote:
Bring your Zany your Colors your Unafraid Bring your Cooky your Monkey your Tambourine Bring your Foofoo your Feathers your Umbrellashade Bring your Stilts your Maracas your Songlungs true Bring your Poem to shout Bring your lumps to shake Bring you.
She added, "Please don't post this to list-servs." She wanted her "baby street theatre parade seed" to be kept "more on the mum side so it has some surprise flava." About twenty people showed up.
The next year Scott and Paulsen announced the first formal People's Joy Parade. They got the proper permits and scheduled it to coincide with Cinco de Mayo. They had no funding, "just heart and guts," recalls Paulsen, who personally hand-crafted some invitations. She and Scott also passed out fliers at Cherokee shops and knocked on residents' doors.
"I don't remember overt interest," Scott says. "We weren't in costume. The message was, 'We're sane. You can trust us.'"
Soon after, the duo recruited Shacklett, and the parade grew to a joyous annual explosion of the Cherokee area's creativity. For years, it's been a beloved ritual for many southsiders.
Thenhaus is intent on making sure that doesn't change in 2024.
"I thought this was about all the neighbors coming together," she says. "It's not Jenny's Joy Parade, it's the People's Joy Parade."
Asked if she foresees litigation if the foundation doesn't back down, Thenhaus says she's not sure. But the parade will go on.
"From my perspective and from the foundation's perspective, at the end of the day, the People's Joy Parade is not a business and it's not one person's parade," she says. "It belongs to the neighbors and the people who show up on parade day."
The foundation plans to release more information about artists' grants in the next two weeks. Watch cincodemayostl.com for details.
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