Progress Pride Flag was created in June 2018 by Daniel Quasar, artist from Portland, Oregon. [1] The design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, with several additional requirements for commercial use, such as donating part of the profit from sales to a LGBTQ organization. [2]
The flag is inspired by expansion of the Rainbow Flag with black and brown stripes, to represent the "people of color", as was done in Philadelphia in June 2017, and subsequent further expansion with pale blue, pink and white stripes, to represent transgender people, as was presented in Seattle on 1 June 2018. Additional inspiration was the Victory Over AIDS FLag, where the Rainbow Flag was amended by a black stripe, to represent the victims of AIDS.
In Quasar's design, rainbow stripes occupy whole width of the flag, while the other five colors form an arrow shape, based at the hoist and pointing towards the fly, which stands for progress. [3] The arrow shape consists of a white triangle next to the hoist edge, followed by four chevrons in pink (innermost), pale blue, brown and black (outermost), each of those as wide as half of the rainbow stripes' width. According to Quasar's instructions, [4] the endings of partition line between pink and pale blue chevrons shall be in the flag corners; however, the author himself does not respect this rule, for all the flag images throughout his website display the design with the endings of partition line between pale blue and brown chevrons being in the flag corners; [1,2,3] moreover, the flag photos at the online shop display the same, [5] as do all the currently known photos of flag use (below).
The flag use is beginning to spread outside the English-speaking part of the world, too: a large bearing the flag pattern was carried at the Helsinki Pride on 29 June 2019 by a number of participants which included Antti Rinne, the then-current Prime Minister of Finland. Tomislav Todorović, 17 June 2020 Source: The Press Democrat website: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/celebrations/9758995-181/celebrating-lgbtq-pride-month-around?sba=AAS&artslide=67
(NOTE: due to some unclear bug, the above address will not always lead directly to the "Slide 68 of 96", but it can always be reached by clicking the arrow buttons as many times as necessary; when that is completed, the said address is displayed.)
On a recent trip to Richmond, Virginia, we drove past the headquarters of Diversity Richmond, a civic organization dedicated to championing the diversity of the city's communities, with particular attention to Richmond's LGBTQ citizens and their families.[1] The building, right next to busy Interstate 95, has three giant flagpoles from which they fly the American flag, the Virginia flag, and the Progress Pride flag. When we drove past, the flag was plainly visible from the highway and was at least 8 ft tall by 13 ft long. Unfortunately, since I was driving, I was unable to snap a photo of it, but it was plainly visible to everyone in the car. They previously flew both the standard six-stripe rainbow flag (red at top) and the rainbow flag for people of color, but recently replaced it with the Progress Pride flag. According to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper, the three flagpoles were erected in late 2019 and the flags hoisted for the first time on 21 November 2019, "tall enough so drivers on Interstate 64/95 can see it and be reminded of the community's presence in Richmond."[2] Randy Young, 21 July 2020 Sources:
[1] — Official website of Diversity Richmond: http://diversityrichmond.org/
[2] — Richmond Times-Dispatch article: https://richmond.com/news/local/government-politics/diversity-richmond-celebrates-20-years-of-helping-regions-lgbtq-community/article_10c69d14-3a8b-5a0f-b077-1bfab4bc2487.html#1
Not long after the creation of Progress Pride flag, there were comments about its similarities with the flag of Puerto Rico, and even more, the Puerto Rican Rainbow Flag which brought the suspicions that these similarities were exploited, with dubious benefits for the people the flag is supposed to represent. Part of reaction to that was the creation of the New Pride Flag by Julia Feliz, which was intended to represent the transgender and people of color in a less controversial way. In response to the accusations, Daniel Quasar has stated that any similarity is "entirely coincidental and unintenional." He also supported the creation of the New Pride Flag, saying: "The more flags, the more discussion, the better." Tomislav Todorović, 22 August 2020 Source: Gay Star News website: https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/new-pride-flag-trans-people-of-color/
A new version of the flag has been designed recently, to include intersex people, according to an 8 June 2021 article at them.us (https://www.them.us/story/progress-pride-flag-intersex-inclusive-makeover). The new design was created by intersex columnist Valentino Vecchietti and was officially adopted by the British advocacy group Intersex Equality Rights UK in May 2021. While I haven't been able to find any examples of this design being used yet in the wild, it is being sold on several flag and LGBTQ+ websites.
The new design adds the purple ring on yellow of the intersex flag to the Progress Pride flag's hoist, reducing the original white triangle to a white chevron, alongside the pink, light blue, brown, and black chevrons that already existed. Randy Young, 6 July 2021
The design has appeared on the handheld flags which were used in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 27 October 2021, at a meeting on the preparations for the upcoming Baltic Pride 2022 festival, which is to take place in Vilnius. The flags were displaying the pattern of the obverse only, the reverse being white, with the text announcing the event in black. Tomislav Todorović, 2 December 2021 Source: Lithuanian Gay League website: https://www.lgl.lt/en/?p=24540
![[Progress Pride flag]](../images/q/qq-progr.gif)
![[Progress Pride flag variant]](../images/q/qq-prog2.gif)
![[Unity Flag]](../images/q/qq-unity.gif)
![[New Progress Pride flag]](../images/q/qq_nprgs.gif)
