Ambivalent Pride
2017Jericho Jones 2017-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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This time of year we have reason to look with rejoic ing at Gay Pride celebrations around the world. Their number, persistence, and exuberance were unimagi nable to this lonely queer kid growing up in the 1970s.
To think there was any place you could be openly, even flagrantly gay was like oxygen. Today, hundreds of pride celebrations offer queer kids almost anywhere the hope of finding a place of relative freedom.
Yet in spite of our advances, we still live under the threat of violence driven by hate. Not two weeks ago, we marked the first anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, the deadliest mass shooting by one person in U.S. history. Barely a week seems to pass between reports of vicious and deadly attacks on transgender women. Stonewall may have been nearly 50 years ago, but we are still awash in hate.
Experience shows that facts and argument don’t counter hate, but knowing a queer person and feeling empathy can. Decades of painful, frequently danger ous coming out have given many of us a world where queer people can hope to find a place to live and pros per. The importance of showing pride to the world hasn’t become any less urgent.
Even so, Gay Pride is the season of ambivalence for me. Early on, it represented a radical demonstration that queer people not only refuse to be silent but in A Bundle Including DirecTV—After mass informational picketing, the Com munications Workers of America won a re newed contract for 17,000 AT&T workers in California and Nevada that includes modest wage and benefit improvements and, for the first time, covers employees of the satellite television competitor with cable the carrier acquired in 2015.
Follow the Food—Workday Minnesota reports from Rochester: “More than 500 food service workers who were outsourced last year in a controversial decision by Mayo Clinic have reached a tentative agreement with their new employer, Morrison Health care, their union announced. Food service workers from across multiple Mayo fa cilities in Rochester, Albert Lea, Faribault, Fairmont, and Mankato were represented on the bargaining team that has worked for months leading up to July 1, when the final food service workers officially transition to Morrison.
In a unique arrangement, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota food service workers joined with food service workers represented by the AFSCME Council 65 and Teamsters Local 120 unions to bargain the first contract with Morrison.” All of these workers will receive at least modest raises. Those previously em ployed by Sodexo, who just recently joined SEIU, get boosts of up to 42 percent.
New Life for Free-Loaders?—Pub lic sector workers are excluded from the sist on making their presence undeniable. In the years since, it has become something distinctly different. What once celebrated the freewheeling sense of possi bility at the heart of queer life has become an opportu nity for corporate marketing and for solidarity among queers who happen to live and look like the majority.
This was demonstrated recently by the interrup tion of Washington Pride by a radical group called No Justice, No Pride. Primary among their issues was the inclusion of the police in Pride, with its obvious ap proval by Pride organizers.
It’s stunning: never mind the obvious fact that the police have long been one of the threatening forces that queer people battle to live normal lives, Wash ington Pride (and others) included and celebrated an institution that regularly murders African Americans. Yet there was widespread condemnation of No Justice, No Pride for interfering in the party, not for the or ganizers who planned a party that pointedly included racist killers.
Then there is the corporatization of Pride. These celebrations nearly always include corporate spon sorship, i.e., plastering the event with company logos for advertising. Washington Pride was sponsored by a number of corporations, among them Wells Fargo Bank.
On the surface, this is normal—the bank is looking for customers, the organizers are looking for someone caster, Pa. mostly Latinx. The murdered transwomen mentioned above have mostly been women of color. The names of Black people murdered by police—the ones deemed newsworthy—appear in the media almost every week. How do we celebrate Pride when so many are ignored while Pride celebrates the wealthy and pow erful?
All I can offer is a reminder of the outsiders who gave us the origin of Pride, the patrons of the Stone wall Inn who, early on the morning of June 28, 1969, decided they had had it with police harassment and rioted. That is, they protested with violence, smash ing windows, setting fire to cars, and throwing pieces of the street at police. The rioters were not polite, well-connected cis gay men in suits, but marginalized queers, trans women of color, butch lesbians, and drag queens.
And they did not quit, as the rioting continued a sec ond night and went on to inspire the gay liberation movement in ways polite white homophile organiza tions like the Mattachine Society never did and never could.
These queer forbearers showed us that change does not come from appealing to wealth and power, but from standing against them without apology. The struggles for Black civil rights and the history of the la bor movement showed us the same. That Pride would leave trans people and queer people of color behind is unconscionable. Red Rose Socialists stands—al ways—with the marginalized, the powerless, and the voiceless in their struggles. n The author is a member of Red Rose Socialists in Lan They may use their paid time for illness or