(Pictured: Performers at last year’s Tacoma Moon Festival included the Sohoyini West African Dance Company. This year’s festival will be held Sept. 14.)

Tacoma Moon Festival is back this month for its annual cornucopia of entertainment and inclusiveness.

On Sept. 14 from 1 to 7 p.m., the event at Chinese Reconciliation Park on Ruston Way, on the shore of Commencement Bay, the festival will serve as the opening event of Tacoma Community House’s Welcoming Week, started in 2012 by Welcoming America, a non-profit movement of inclusive communities becoming more prosperous by ensuring everyone belongs, including immigrants. This year’s activities will celebrate immigrants who have completed the process of becoming new citizens. Join us as we honor and recognize them in their journey to citizenship!

The 2024 Tacoma Moon Festival puts a special focus on  Mexican and Latinx communities and traditions. Cultural entertainment will include Seattle’s Tlalokan indigenous Anahuac dance and music performers, Tacoma’s Sabor Flamenco performing Spanish and Cuban Flamenco dances, and the youthful Mariachi Almanueva and Mariachi de Pacifico de PLU with Mexican music.

Chinese culture will bookend the festival with the Mak Fai Lion Dance Association opening the festivities at 1 o’clock and the Hwa Sheng Chinese Opera Club at 6 in full makeup and costumes from famous scenes of Chinese opera.

Other performers include the Karisma Dancing Group (Vietnamese dance), Cambodian Classical and Folk Dance of the Northwest, and Guma Imahe (song and dance of the indigenous Chamorro people of the Mariana Islands).

The festival will close with a lantern parade at 6:45 p.m.

Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation, an organizer of the festival, is a non-profit organization that advances civic harmony. One way is through Reconciliation Park, a memorial to Chinese who were forcibly expelled from Tacoma in 1885. The park tells their story and encourages appreciation of diverse cultures as a way of building an inclusive community.

More information is at tacomacommunityhouse.org and welcomingamerica.org.