https://socialistaction.org/2017/07/29/pride-2017/
Pride 2017
/ 12 hours ago
Aug. 2017 Black Pride By ANN MONTAGUE
This is a pivotal year for the LGBTQ movement and particularly for Pride
events around the country. While we have seen some victories, the most
important have remained beyond our grasp. We still have no federal
nondiscrimination law that bans employment and housing discrimination
based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Democrats use it to
campaign to our community on it and once elected let it languish, never
to be heard of again.
On top of this basic hole in the equality map, we are facing state
rollbacks of protections we have gained and threats to move to rehearing
settled cases such as marriage equality. We also are experiencing
increasing numbers of acts of violence against lesbians, gay men, and
especially trans women of color.
Most recently, on July 26 in Phoenix, police were looking for a man who
was caught on videotape walking into an LGBT youth center carrying a gas
can, pouring its contents on the floor, and leaving. Seconds later the
room went up in flames. The following day in Cleveland, a group attacked
a transgender resident with a brick, a wooden plank, and a helmet and
then posted it on Snapchat. Two men and two women hit, stomped, and
kicked the 20-year-old victim at an apartment complex. A family member
said that a group had terrorized the victim for months prior to the attack.
The spirit of Stonewall
Most Pride events are celebrations of community and visibility that
begin in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising. This was a
defining moment in the modern LGBT rights movement when a tired, angry,
and oppressed community took to the streets. The early Pride marches
were all about “Gay Liberation” and “Gay Freedom”. As we are moving
towards the 50th anniversary of Stonewall in 2019, it will be inevitable
that we look back at where we have been and where we are now.
For years now, many have complained about what Pride marches have
become. Some have quit going, while others grumble about the Stonewall
memories fading, and often there is a lone group marching with a sign,
“Remember Stonewall.” Others have complained not about the marches and
celebration of our victories but how our community is now treated like a
marketplace where corporations are rebranding themselves to appear LGBT
friendly. Pride became a place where insurance companies and major
corporations would hawk their wares. Some wondered how we got there from
a celebration of an uprising of an oppressed community.
Just exactly how terribly pervasive this had become was exposed for all
to see in 2013 when the San Francisco Pride Board overturned the normal
process of picking Parade Marshals and rejected the choice of Chelsea
Manning. This was a symbolic gesture since at the time Manning was in
custody at a military prison in Kansas awaiting court-martial for
leaking government documents to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in 1971 leaked
classified information about the Vietnam War (The Pentagon Papers), had
agreed to participate on Manning’s behalf. Despite the rejection by the
board, 2500 LGBT community members marched behind the banner “Pride In
Our Whistleblower.”
As a result of this high profile struggle in the LGBT community, many
activists in cities and towns around the country were surprised to hear
that not only did the largest LGBT gathering in the country have a
board of directors who made all the major decisions but that there was
actually such a thing as an SF Pride CEO. So much corporate money was
involved in San Francisco Pride that they created a CEO position!
When most people think about the Stonewall uprising they think it was
just one isolated night when LGBT patrons of a bar fought back against
police harassment. But it continued for a number of days with
organizing, posting leaflets during the day, and confronting the police
at night. This was not an isolated event but took place in the midst of
an ongoing student radicalization, antiwar movement, and growing Black
liberation and women’s liberation movements. There was a reason that one
of the first organizations after Stonewall was called the Gay Liberation
Front.
Pride was different this year
We are once again entering a time of resistance, so it should not be a
surprise to anyone that Pride should be different this year. In many
cities around the country there were new discussions about solidarity
with all groups who are under attack. Struggles against racism, sexism,
immigrants, and Islamophobia all include LGBTQ individuals.
In New York City, with one of the oldest and largest Pride marches in
the country, demonstrators who opposed police involvement in the march
filled the streets around the Stonewall Inn, the site of the historic
LGBT uprising in 1969. This protest was affiliated with the group “No
Justice, No Pride” and describes itself as a “local coalition of queer
and trans folks working to end the LGBTQ movement’s complicity with
systems that oppress.”
A current lawsuit alleges that an NYPD cop beat up a gay man while
yelling anti-gay slurs at him during the 2014 Pride Parade and just last
year Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the NYPD did not have to
apologize to the LGBTQ community for police brutality during the
Stonewall uprising.
In Washington, D.C., people blocked the march in protest against the
corporate sponsorship of Wells Fargo because of its funding of the
Dakota Access Pipeline. No Justice, No Pride DC said they had
unsuccessful negotiations with Capitol Pride trying to get them to stop
banking with Well Fargo. Jen Deerinwater, a Two Spirit member of the
Cherokee Nation, told NBC, “I cannot understand why Capitol Pride would
work with an organization that is actively causing harm to our community
members.”
One exception was LA Pride, which changed its name to #ResistMarch to
reflect the inclusive nature of their Pride 2017 plans. The first march
in Los Angeles was in 1970 and it was to show solidarity with the
Stonewall uprising and to protest ongoing police brutality against the
LGBT community.
To emphasize that this year was a protest march, Brian Pendleton, one of
the Los Angeles organizers, issued a statement when they changed their
website and replaced LA Pride with #ResistMarch: “This year the LGBTQ
community is lending our iconic rainbow flag to anyone who feels like
their rights are under threat and to anyone who feels like America’s
strength is in its diversity. The political climate we find ourselves in
has driven us to galvanize and unite.” Tens of thousands of people
responded with one of the biggest marches of 2017.
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July 29, 2017 in LGBT rights.
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