LGBTQ activists organizing under the banner #PrideWithoutPrejudice, who proudly participated in the year-long #blacklivesmatter uprising since George Floyd's murder by police, are organizing two inclusive "People's Pride" actions in the last week of June in place of the annual corporate Pride Parade.
A participatory march ( www.facebook.com/events/853383271930335 )of the LGBTQ community and allies will begin with a short opening rally at 12 noon, Sunday, June 27th at the "Belmont" Red/Brown lines el station, replacing the parade of corporations and politicians traditionally held on that date. The march, with a sister event on Wednesday, June 30 on the West Side (details TBA), will focus on community members, especially Black and Trans people, who are typically marginalized or tokenized at white-led Pride events.
Last year's Pride Without Prejudice march was attended by many thousands.
This year's events will again unapologetically highlight issues of racism, police violence, and the obscene amount of money spent on militarized police, and a military which polices much of the world. In so doing, participants will be honoring the rich, but largely forgotten history of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion which rebirthed the worldwide LGBTQ movement.
"Not only was Stonewall a rebellion against police violence, fighting racism was also a core principle of the movement that came immediately after it," said Ashabi Owagboriaye of Pride Without Prejudice. "The early LGBTQ movement organized many actions against racism and police violence and in solidarity with the Black Panther Party, leading the BPP to become the first large 'non-LGBTQ' organization to embrace what at the time was called 'gay liberation.'"
"Like today's #blacklivesmatter movement with its demand to defund the police, the post-Stonewall LGBTQ movement recognized that resources spent on repression deprived communities of needed resources. As such and in solidarity with peoples abroad, the movement organized into chapters known as the 'Gay Liberation Front,' named after the National Liberation Front in Vietnam. GLF proudly organized in the anti-war movement of that era."
Pride Without Prejudice organizers note that for all the lip service given to "diversity" by today's corporate trainers and politicians, the Stonewall movement was "intersectional" before that term had even been invented. So besides its unapologetic opposition to racism and US wars, Lesbian and Bisexual women helped radicalize the women's movement of its time, challenging its entrenched homophobia and respectability politics. In so doing they helped win specific, wide-ranging reforms, such as support for publicly funded childcare, healthcare clinics and legalized abortion.
Demands of the June 27th march include:
— Reclaim Pride from white profiteers and huge corporations and return it to the people, especially our Black and Brown communities.
— Refocus and remember that Pride began with Black, Brown and Trans lives. We want bars and events to not only include, but showcase and feature the black, brown, trans, femme, lesbian, non-binary, ballroom and all other underrepresented communities on all promotions and advertisements for without these communities we would not have any of the achievements we have today.
— Defund the police, fund our communities, and redistribute wealth.
— Community control of the police, with an elected civilian police accountability council that can promptly fire brutal cops and the police superintendent.
— The Stonewall Movement was against state violence, whether at home or abroad, opposing police terror against the Black Panther Party and the US war against Vietnam. Today that also means abolishing ICE, stopping deportations, and stopping the scapegoat of immigrants and refugees
— Decriminalize sex work and demand justice for Trans lives who have been murdered
