After years of activism from New York’s LGBTQ community, NYC Pride banned police from their official Pride parade, and a Seattle Pride organization has followed suit. Both cities have long resisted corporate Pride events and police presence at LGBTQ events, and with last year’s mass protests against police terror, the community finally succeeded in expelling the pigs.
Recent years have seen major, more militant events during Pride, like New York’s LGBTQ Liberation March from 2019, which rejected the corporate Pride event in favor of a more political, cop-free protest. Seattle has had a Trans Pride March that has been free of police for many years.
Amid last summer’s uprising against police terror, LGBTQ activists endured brutal repression and arrests in Seattle and many other parts of the country. The Capitol Hill Pride Festival announced their decision to kick the cops out last week and denounced the police for their ties to right-wing organizations as well.
For the past three years, the New Orleans Workers Group protested the presence of corporations, cops, and military in the local Pride parade. In 2020, after a motorcade for Pride, the people of New Orleans tore down the bust of slaveowner John McDonough in Duncan Plaza.
Pride events commemorate the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, an uprising against police brutality against queer and trans people at the Stonewall Inn in New York. Police, corporations, and the military are enemies of LGBTQ liberation, as they serve the rich ruling class that funds and profits off our oppression.
