Pride & Immigrant Heritage Month: Shining Light on Joy and Resilience

Pride & Immigrant Heritage Month: Shining Light on Joy and Resilience

June 25, 2025

Every June, as we celebrate both Pride and Immigrant Heritage Month, we get a reminder of how our identities connect us to food and vice versa. 

For Coloradans of all identities, food is not just nourishment; it’s a celebration of culture, an expression of joy, and a tool for resistance and cultural preservation. For immigrant and LGBTQIA2+ communities, food has long served as both a lifeline and a love language—a way to hold on to heritage, resist marginalization, and cultivate community. There is no better place to witness that intersection than at the table.

This month, we’re honoring that legacy by spotlighting the contributions of LGBTQIA2+ and immigrant communities to our food system and beyond while also acknowledging the oppressive systems, structures, and policies that work against these groups.

The Joy:

Colorado without immigrants is food with no flavor. From tacos to pho, curry, to Xia Long Bao soup dumplings, immigrant contributions have helped fill and flavor our plates with some of our favorite dishes. 

Long before food reaches our kitchens, immigrants form the backbone of our local food system, making up more than 70% of agricultural workers. 

The influence of queer and immigrant communities extends beyond cultivating and creating of food into where we consume it as well. Queer-owned and immigrant-led restaurants often double as community hubs: places to gather, feel seen, and feed others with dignity. All across the U.S., these leaders continue to push for change through pioneering ideas like “gastro-advocacy”—pairing globally inspired dishes with resources on civic engagement.

This is the joy we celebrate: culture preserved through recipes, chosen families gathering around meals, and community kitchens cooking up pride.

The Barriers: 

Food insecurity remains a prevalent and deeply ingrained issue that disproportionately impacts communities that continue to face historically rooted oppression. Non-citizens report facing food insecurity at nearly double the rate of U.S. citizens. 

That is to say, despite making up such a large part of our food system, many immigrant food workers cannot access the very food they help produce. Fear of deportation, exclusion from federal programs, language barriers, and misinformation all contribute to under-enrollment in food assistance programs like SNAP, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Many immigrant families are eligible for SNAP but don’t apply; this is in part due to fears tied to immigration status rules and ongoing anti-immigrant rhetoric.

At the same time, many members of the queer community face exacerbated barriers to food access as well. Non-binary people face food insecurity at a reported rate that’s double of their cis-male counterparts. Nationally, trans people often face discrimination in housing and employment—two major predictors of food insecurity. This discrimination is something that impacts the queer community as a whole. 

For LGBTQIA2+ immigrants, the risks compound. Many are also navigating trauma, asylum processes, or familial rejection, further limiting access to stable nutrition.

Building a Better Food System for the Future: 

Still, LGBTQIA2+ and immigrant communities continue to lead the way in building more just, inclusive, and sustainable food systems.

From community fridges in immigrant neighborhoods to queer-owned farms and cooperatives, grassroots innovation is alive and well. Organizations like FrontLine Farming are providing food to people of all immigration statuses, gender and sexuality identities, and income levels. 

The cultural wealth that immigrant and queer communities bring—through language, farming knowledge, recipes, and traditions of food, resistance, and innovation—strengthens the resilience of our food system. These contributions deserve not only celebration but protection.

Food connects us. It reminds us who we are and where we’ve been. But not everyone has equal access to that joy.

This Pride & Immigrant Heritage Month, let’s honor the full picture: the celebrations, the recipes, the labor, the pain, and the perseverance. Let’s nourish each other not just with food—but with care, dignity, justice, and advocacy.

Your Role in This:

A couple ways to spread the love this Immigrant Heritage & Pride Month: