No Bosses, No Boyfriends

This is a repost from the Indypendent Reader.

on june 18 a group of radical queers invited themselves to enter the baltimore pride parade.  our aim was to bring to light the way in which the lgbt movement has become corporatized by groups who do not actually support much of the community.  over the years pride has become a huge party, full of b-list performers and corporate floats sprinkling the parade route.  rarely is it acknowledged that what is thought to be the first pride parade came about as the result of the riots at the stonewall inn in new york.  the struggles that queers faced at that time were met with resistance to the oppressive nature of the police, government officials, and society at large.  that history is slowly being erased, and saturday’s action was hopefully just one of many that will continually remind the queer community in baltimore that for many the struggle is not over, and erasing that part of our community’s history will only set us back even further.

we entered the parade approximately half way through, as close to the constellation energy float as possible.  two banners were quickly unfurled as we proceeded up the street.  one banner read “stonewall was a riot” and the other read “community not corporations.”  we had two people carrying each banner, and others walking along side, handing out information sheets to the crowd.  while the banners were important to get the immediate attention of the spectators, it was the handouts that contained the imperative facts.  one side had printed on it a brief history of the stonewall riots, and the parade that took place a year later to commemorate the event.  the other side provided information about some of the major corporate sponsors of this year’s pride events, including verizon, constellation energy,  bank of america and miller lite.  so quickly are people to assume that just because a company sponsors an lgbt event they are supportive of the community, but the reality is that often those same companies give equal amounts of money, if not more, to organizations and politicians who are in direct opposition of our community.  we sought to bring to light the bad side of these supposed “good” corporations.

it is our hope that our action renewed in the spectators a need to remember, respect and discuss the history of struggles that got part of the community to where it is today.  we recognize that this action only focused on one of many issues that our community faces, but it is our plan in the future to plan more actions that will focus on other issues, specifically ones that pertain to youth and transgender/gender non-conforming individuals.

Tags: activism, BMORE, direct action, queer