Pride Must Be Anti-Colonial/Anti-Imperialist!
As the Trump administration emboldens national and global queerphobic violence, it’s important to not let Pride get co-opted by neoliberal actors and institutions that engage in the same capitalist and imperialist structures oppressing queer/trans folks around the world.
Remember: Pride was an UPRISING!!
We must always acknowledge the radical roots of Pride originating from the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. By 1969, the Stonewall Inn was one of New York City’s most popular gay bars in the 1960s and a central hub for the state’s most marginalized memners, attracting an “electric crowd of cruising gay men, drag queens, street kids, and some lesbians.”
The Stonewall Inn was raided on average once a month leading up to the raid on June 28, 1969 (Martin Duberman,Stonewall p. 187), and had been raided once already that same week. But police were more aggressive than usual on that night, smashing furniture and physically assaulting patrons who mouthed back at them.
The culmination of continuous raids, the police disrupting the festivities at peak hours, and their being more violent than usual sparked long boiling anger from their gay victims. Patrons and bystanders threw coins, bottles, cobblestones, and trash cans at cops before evolving into an all-out rebellion — led by the most marginalized and targeted of society such as street kids, trans women, sex workers, and Black and other queer folks of color.
You can learn more about the Stonewall Uprising from the sources below. It’s also important to recognize there were multiple rebellions against police & state brutality imposed on LGBTQ+ communities throughout the U.S but don’t get the same historical attention as Stonewall. You can learn about these rebellions in the first two links below:
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries was founded in New York in 1970, by Stonewall veterans Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson to address the immediate basic needs of the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community while fighting for trans liberation.
Inspired by the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), and revolutionary nationalist groups like the Black Panther Party, STAR was anticapitalist, advocating for bodily autonomy, free healthcare, food, transportation, clothing, education, and housing.
STAR provided food, clothing, and shelter for countless homeless trans youth, and eventually had chapters in Chicago, California and England. They participated in discussions regarding the New York City Gay Rights Bill proposed by the GAA in 1970, attending several hearings about the bill to advocate for the inclusion of transgender rights.
Although STAR was short lived, Johnson and Riveria continued their radical organizing against tranTrans Liberation: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and Queens Liberation Frontsphobic violence and capitalism, paving the way for later trans leaders, activism, and developments in queer theory.
Learn more about STAR below:
Trans Liberation: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and Queens Liberation Front
Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR)
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle PDF
The Impact of STAR / Street Transvestite Action Revolutionary by The Dugout Podcast
Resist Pinkwashing
Pinkwashing is the practice of a corporate or state actor deploying pro-LGBTQ+ sentiments and performances to justify its exploitative or violent actions against the queer community and/or other oppressed groups.
Corporations often employ pinkwashing to perpetuate rainbow capitalism and manufacture consent for their inherently exploitative practices and contributions to climate change, and rake in more profits from queer and non-queer customers alike.
The term was coined in April 2010 by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT) in the San Francisco Bay Area to call out the settler colonial Israeli state and its supporters using the “language of gay and trans rights to divert international attention away from the oppression of Palestinians.”
By doing this, Israel also erases queer Palestinians’ voices who experience both queerphobia within the larger Palestinian community and settler colonial violence from Israeli occupation. Through Zionist and Islamophobic propaganda, Palestinians are framed as “backwards” and overtly regressive in their gender/sexuality beliefs because of their Arabness, and thus deserving of the genocide by Israel.
The PCCC has no desire to support any corporation or institution that panders to our community while still serving the same capitalist and neocolonial interests of the ruling class. Liberal concessions and symbolism don’t do anything to resist the imperialist structures that govern, ruin, and steal billions of queer lives both here in the U.S and around the world.
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Land Acknowledgement
The Pride Collective & Community Center sits on the land on the occupied lands of the Bdewakantuwan (Mdewakanton), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Prairie Island Indian Community, and Alexis Nakota Sioux Nations. All of these Indigenous Nations have lived on these lands for tens of thousands of years before any settler stepped foot on what we now call “North Dakota” and continue to live here today. Click here to learn more about these Nations and how to support them.
