Minneapolis, MN – For the seventh year running, community members disrupted the Twin Cities Pride parade, June 30, to protest the inclusion of cops and corporations. Their inclusion comes at the expense of queer community members who want the event to honor the spirit of radical resistance Pride came out of and to continue the fight for LGBTQ liberation. This year, more than 1000 protesters marched with the Taking Back Pride Coalition for not only LGBTQ liberation, but especially for Palestinian liberation.

TC Pride is one of the largest such events in the country, drawing hundreds of thousands of people. Taking Back Pride, a coalition initiated by Twin Cities Coalition for Justice (TCC4J), took the street in protest ahead of the corporate-sponsored parade.

The first Taking Back Pride protest focused on demanding an end to police presence in the parade and the festival, but organizers soon expanded their demands to address Pride’s failure to address the needs of Black, brown and indigenous community members, especially trans folks. They have long called on Pride to break ties with the corporations that dominate the parade and festival.

As TCC4J organizer Loretta VanPelt put it, “These corporations funnel millions of dollars into conservative campaigns and laws, they pollute the planet, they support war and genocide. Then once a year they throw a rainbow on their logo and think we’ll just forget all that. But we remember and we want to remind people that our rights as LGBT people are far from secure and that these corporations only care about us when we’re profitable.”

The first Pride march was held in New York City in 1970, marking one year after the Stonewall rebellion, when LGBTQ folks fought back against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar. The confrontation lasted five nights where, with bricks and molotov cocktails, the community fought back against police terror. This was the time when the LGBTQ liberation made strong connections to other movements, from the Black liberation movement to the movement to end U.S. war in Vietnam. Cities across the country continue to celebrate Pride, but most of these events, including in Minneapolis, have devolved to a party for tourists instead of a political event commemorating the Stonewall uprising against police brutality.

Hundreds of anti-trans bills are set to pass in the next year. Black and brown people continue to be brutalized and killed by police. 40,000 Palestinians have been murdered since October 7. Taking Back Pride Coalition organizers say TC Pride is complicit in these injustices, through silence, inaction and even making space for the FBI, the National Guard, and weapons manufacturers to participate.

A statement by organizers said, “We refuse to allow this disgusting pinkwashing of genocide to continue unchallenged. We march for a free Palestine and an end to all imperialist occupations, for substantive accountability for those impacted by police brutality through community control, for our queer and trans siblings who have been stolen by violence, and for true queer liberation. We march to honor the legacy of Black and brown trans women and nonbinary people who fought for the rights and acceptance of all LGBTQ people.”

Led by Bikers Riding Against Police Brutality (BRAPB), a social justice motorcycle group, and Fury du Nord – a queer and trans motorcycle riding club, protesters marched the same route as the corporate parade, to the beat of the Yalla Drum group and the Unlawful Assembly Marching Band. The corporate parade was delayed, as protesters stopped every few blocks for speakers and performance. One powerful stop was a die-in, where the names of trans people killed in the last year were read aloud. Parade organizers and security complained about delays, but most onlookers were supportive, joining in many of the chants. Some even left the sidelines and joined the march.

The protest ended with multiple actions inside the massive Pride festival at Loring Park. First, protesters took over the Stonewall Stage. Organizer Jae Yates explained the reason for the protest, and then Levi Lake spoke in tribute to Liara Tsai, a trans DJ who was killed just the week before.

Smaller groups broke off to disrupt problematic festival vendors. The FBI and the National Guard both had booths, aiming to recruit from the LGBTQ community. Protesters blocked their booths with massive banners and addressed the crowds of people about their role in oppressing people’s movements at home and abroad. Another group disrupted the Target corporation photobooth, by displaying images of Palestinian martyrs as a protest of the U.S.-backed genocide.

In addition to TCC4J, the Taking Back Pride Coalition includes Anti War Committee MN, Bikers Riding Against Police Brutality, Climate Justice Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, MN Abortion Action Committee, MN Immigrant Rights Action Committee, MN Workers United, People’s Pride, UMN Students for a Democratic Society, Unlawful Assembly Marching Band, and Women Against Military Madness.

#MinneapolisMN #TakingBackPride #TCC4J #WAMM #AntiWarCommitteeMN #Pride #LGBTQLiberation #StandUpFightBack #FreePalestine #MIRAC #SDS #UMNSDS #TwinCitiesPride #TwinCities #Stonewall

Minneapolis, MN – On June 25 hundreds came together to protest the city-sanctioned Twin Cities Pride parade. Now in its seventh year, the Taking Back Pride protest was a powerful display of solidarity amongst several organizations that demand that there be no cops and corporations at Pride.

Speakers at the action made the connection to attacks on the LGBTQ community nationwide and local struggles. Even though Minnesota was recently designated a sanctuary state for trans people, attendees were reminded that the struggle for trans rights is ongoing, and that concrete protections, housing and economic assistance are needed as trans people from red states flee to Minnesota. With over 500 anti-trans bills being voted on across the country in 2023, many speeches warned TC Pride attendees against complacency. Protesters carried signs that reminded onlookers that LGBTQ liberation should be at the forefront of every Pride and to fight back against the attacks of right-wing legislation like that in Florida and other states.

The march made its way through Loring Park where the Pride Festival was held. Jae Yates, an organizer with the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar and Freedom Road Socialist Organization, co-emceed with Jaelynne Palmer, another member of TCC4J. A few sympathetic festival organizers got Yates onto the main stage. Once there, they reminded festival goers why there continues to be a protest at the parade and festival each year, pointing out that organizers of TC Pride continue to be tone deaf to community demands to keep cops and corporations out of Pride.

#MinneapolisMN #TakingBackPride

New York, NY – Thousands gathered at Foley Square in New York City on Sunday, June 26, for the fourth annual Queer Liberation March, organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition. It is a yearly event to commemorate Pride Month by going back to its roots as a protest and an alternative to the corporate Pride events in the city.

This year, the demands of the march were freedom for people of color, including Black and indigenous persons; justice for trans people; reproductive justice, and bodily autonomy. The protest came just days after the announcement of the overturn of Roe v. Wade and amidst legislation targeting LGBTQ+ people.

After the crowd met at Foley Square, they marched through the streets to Washington Square Park, where the crowd then celebrated before ending for the night.

#NewYorkNY #Pride #TakingBackPride

Milwaukee, WI – Despite the sporadic rainfall throughout the day on June 25, 100 people showed up to say no to cops and corporations in Pride. The rally and march honored the radical character of the LGBTQ struggle. In Milwaukee, the legacy of Black and brown trans working-class people – like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson – has unfortunately been whitewashed by people who welcome cops and corporations with open arms to Pride.

After departing from Walker’s Point, a neighborhood with many LGBTQ-friendly establishments, the march descended upon the Wisconsin Center, where a summit of conservative figures like Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson was underway.

Speakers of the host organizations – Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (MAARPR), Students for Democratic Society (SDS), and Democratic Socialists of Milwaukee (DSA) along with a representative of Mothers Against Gun Violence – delivered powerful speeches at the entrance of the Wisconsin Center.

Lauryn Cross, a member of the Milwaukee Alliance, noted, “It is important to apply the messages from Stonewall to the same struggle for LGBTQ rights going on today.” The Milwaukee Alliance recognizes the murder of Antonio Gonzalez as another murder and attack on LGBTQ communities by police. Similarly, the recent murder of Brazil Johnson, a Black trans woman in Milwaukee, is the result of police inadequacy in taking up issues that affect LGBTQ safety in the city.

“We need to know who our friends are,” declared Nadezhda Young Binter of FRSO. “The pigs who beat my friends during the George Floyd uprisings, who picked them off the street in unmarked vans, who funneled the crowds towards Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha. Those are not our friends. We need to draw our lessons from our real friends, the movements of the oppressed against the ruling class.”

The Cops and Corps Out of Pride event also comes after Judge Clarence Thomas addressed his threats to Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell v. Hodges, and Griswold v. Connecticut, landmark decisions that helped eradicate laws against LGBTQ sexual activity, legalize gay marriage, and increase access to contraception.

Now more than ever is the time to organize for LGBTQ communities. It’s evident that the reactionary movement is coming after LGBTQ people. The fight for LGBTQ rights will only be won with an organized and persistent grassroots movement, not cops and corporations. Saturday was the first step in taking back Pride in Milwaukee and strengthening our LGBTQ communities.

#MilwaukeeWI #Pride #TakingBackPride

In 2022 alone 36 state legislatures have introduced over 300 anti-LGBTQ bills, with eight of those states passing laws that target transgender youth. Anti-LGBTQ activity increased from 15 documented cases of anti-LGBTQ demonstrations, sexual violence, non-sexual attacks and mob violence in 2020, to 61 documented cases in 2021: a 306% increase. With 33 cases taking place so far this year, 2022 is on track to be even worse.

Most notable is the arrest of 31 members of the Neo-Nazi Patriot Front organization that was planning to attack a Pride celebration in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. This incident, along with attacks perpetrated by self-described Christian Fascists and Proud Boys, have led some elements within the LGBTQ community to call for police cooperation during the remaining Pride events this year.

This sentiment is misguided. The arrest of Patriot Front members, theoretically preventing them from committing violence against LGBTQ people, is an outlier that in no way contradicts the role of police as a uniquely violent institution that targets our most vulnerable communities. Police have killed over 1000 people this past year, with killings of Black, Native American, Chicano and other oppressed nationalities occurring at a much higher proportion to white Americans. When they are not playing ally once per year, police in the U.S. continue to assault and arrest protesters, subvert attempts at accountability, and enact violence against vulnerable communities – including LGBTQ communities – in order to protect property.

In one of the first ever publicized police attacks on the LGBTQ community, members of the newly founded Society of Human Rights, a gay rights organization, were attacked and arrested without a warrant on claims of potential obscenity in 1924. The group disbanded shortly after.

More well known, however, is the historic Black- and trans-led rebellion against police terror that took place at the Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969. Led by queer militants such as Stormé DeLarverie, Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, this rebellion was not in response to the one raid on June 28, but rather against the ongoing campaign of harassment and violence by the police and other violent actors. Regular attacks and raids of any publicly visible gathering of LGBTQ people by the police were commonplace all over the U.S., leading up to the Stonewall Rebellion.

A 2018 report from the National Coalition of Antiviolence Programs indicated that 66% of all LGBTQ people who reported violence to the police were met with either indifference or hostility, with most violence going unreported in the first place due to mistrust of the police. The same report indicates that Black LGBTQ people are three times more likely to experience police violence than non-Black LGBTQ people.

The calls for increased police presence and cooperation at Pride events also requires that vulnerable communities ignore that police in the U.S. don’t usually protect people from right-wing harassment and terror. Police were accused of standing idly by while white supremacists intimidated and shouted down members of the local Black, oppressed nationalities, and LGBTQ communities during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. A member of that coalition, James Alex Fields Jr., would use his vehicle to drive into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 other people.

In the Twin Cities of Minnesota, right-wing groups such as Bikers for Trump regularly attempted to harass, intimidate and even infiltrate protests held by anti-war organizations, the movement for Black lives, immigrant rights groups, and local labor unions. In all cases, it was solely up to the community and the progressive organizations present to protect people from direct harm and harassment, as the police didn’t dare get involved.

Police are even less likely to intervene when life is on the line; the police’s failure to intervene in school shootings in places like Parkland, Florida and Uvalde, Texas make it clear that, even when the situation is dire, police are likely to hesitate or refuse to take action. Under precedents set by the Supreme Court, police in the U.S. are under no obligation to render assistance in the first place.

So long as police in the U.S. remain an active threat to Black and other oppressed nationality and LGBTQ communities, and so long as they continue to be ineffective at preventing white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ violence, the LGBTQ rights movement must remain resolute in demanding that police are not allowed at Pride. One isolated incident in Idaho has not undone a century of anti-LGBTQ violence by U.S. police forces. The demand is still for Pride to return to its radical Black-led, Trans-led, anti-cop, and anti-corporate roots!

A coalition of student, community, and labor groups from Minneapolis-Saint Paul, led by Twin Cities Coalition 4 Justice 4 Jamar will be taking the street ahead of Minneapolis’ corporate Pride parade on June 26 at 10:30 a.m., at 10th Street and Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. TCC4J and the rest of the coalition will be marching to defend Black trans folks, organize for community control of the police, and demand that cops no longer be allowed at Pride.

#MinneapolisMN #PeoplesStruggles #Pride #Antiracism #TakingBackPride