The beloved Peoplehood Parade will be marching through West Philly Saturday

The first day Jennifer Turnbull went to work at the Peoplehood Parade was the first time she felt she could show up as her full, complete self: a Black person, a gender-expansive woman, and a queer person, all in one body.

For Turnbull, who uses the pronouns she/sir/they, that is what the purpose of the Peoplehood Parade has been since it started over two decades ago: creating a space for Philadelphia’s resistance and activist movements to come together in support, joy, and coalition-building. And this Saturday, the quintessentially West Philly event will once again be taking to the streets with giant puppets.

“You see all the different peoples as really being together,” said Turnbull, codirector of Spiral Q, the nonprofit that organizes the parade. “That’s an ephemeral moment, but that’s the world that I want to see. It’s a moment of, ‘Wow, this is a possibility.’”

The Peoplehood Parade is colorful, celebratory, and passionate — and it’s uniquely Philly.

On Saturday, rhythmic beats of dozens of drums will echo through the streets of West Philadelphia, leading the way for a group of dancers walking and performing while about 40 activist groups march with their artwork. At past parades, giant puppets towered over the dancers, who were holding props like mailboxes to encourage voting, stacks of Amazon boxes to support Amazon workers unionizing, and raised fists with Black Lives Matter written on them.

“In post-COVID times, when so much organizing was happening on all these fronts, and these groups have grown more and more, so has Peoplehood,” said Liza Goodell, codirector of Spiral Q.

That’s what’s special about the parade, organizers say: it’s a space for all of Philly’s activists to come together in solidarity with one another’s causes.

Bookending the parade will be a pageant focused on themes of protection and celebration of land. The pageant will include a giant puppet play with music and narration.

“We’re utilizing that form of performance and pageant to tell a version of the story of the land and the way that the people have gathered; we’re thinking a lot about the Earth and environmentalism and climate change,” Turnbull said.

Over the course of five weeks, activists have been meeting on a near-daily basis to prepare their art for the parade. The creative process is something that’s healing and restorative — an important outlet in the midst of grueling and challenging activism work.

This year, the builds have been focused on healing as the Israel-Hamas war unfolds in real time. The Peoplehood Parade postponed the original date from Oct. 21 in order to organize an emergency build in support of Philly Palestine Coalition’s large protest last Saturday.

“A place for people to put their artistic efforts has been really nice for people to feel like they’re doing something when they feel powerless,” Goodell said.

For the average person, who’s not involved in activism, Turnbull hopes that Peoplehood will provide a portal of knowledge and awareness about various causes — and they hope that through the medium of art, it will be easier to communicate those causes to others.

“It’s a call to action in one of the most accessible ways, which is puppetry,” Turnbull said. “We’re all hardwired to be able to hear sounds and understand what it means. The same thing is true for visual art. It’s a portal to be able to connect.”