How Pride Attendees Kept The Spirit Of Protest Alive

By Sarah Emily Baum


Drag queens left trails of glitter everywhere they walked. The sidewalks were packed so closesly that teenagers wearing rainbow capes and body paint climbed massive construction girders to get a higher end view of the parade. In the distance, counter-protestors waving Bibles airborne were drowned out by audiences who formed a circle around them and chanted over and over and over: “God is gay! God is gay!”


They were just some of the millions of people who visited New York City on the weekend of June 29 and 30 for World Pride, and any of the related Pride events while in the city. This weekend in particular was meant to be special: It was the opening time World Pride itself was hosted by the United States, and contained on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which several mention propelled the modern queer liberation movement.


Because of that, several attendees were reflective, and paid tribute to the people who rose up the night of June 28, 1969. “Trans females of color began this for all of us,” mentioned Sarah Rosenwald, a New York University student who identifies as bisexual. She referenced queer activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were deeply influential before and throughout the Stonewall riots and in the years right after advocating against police brutality and working to protect homeless queer youth. 


Pride has taken several different shapes within the past few decades. Police right now march alongside drag queens and activists alike, and corporate logos co-opt the names of queer figureheads, several of whom cannot sign off on their likenesses being used for profit. (In recent months, police in some cities like Nashville, Tennessee, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, have decided on option ways to involve themselves with Pride.)


This new version of Pride, Rosenwald tells MTV News, feels like also much of a celebration. She attended World Pride because she wanted to be with companions, however says characteristic of the event felt “hypocritical” in contrast to the anti-establishment, anti-police violence origins of the queer liberation movement.


“It feels deliberately ignorant that right now there really are rainbow police cars and cops in the [Pride] parade,” she added. For her, a pink-washed pride feels especially glaring given recent news: that this year alone, at least 10 Black trans women have been murdered or noticed dead. Their deaths were piece of what activists like Johnson and Rivera were fighting to prevent.


Of the young people MTV News discussed with at World Pride, most associated the begin of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the U.S. With the Stonewall riots, which served as a breaking point. Yet LGBTQ+ Residents of the United States had already made fantastic strides in visibility by then: the opening documented LGBTQ+ rights order in the nation, the Human Rights Society, was founded in 1924, and same-sex couples and gender variance have existed “in every documented culture” across every continent, according to the American Psychological Association.


Once the Stonewall riots erupted in the 1960s, police had begun cracking down on underground bars and paying particular attention to gay bars like The Stonewall Inn, which was operated by the mob and selling alcoholic beverages without a booze license at the time, according to the New York Times. Although its clients were also victims of systemic homophobia, transphobia, racism, and classism. Police thought LGBTQ+ people, especially the young people of color who frequented Stonewall, could be an easy target. They were wrong; the Stonewall patrons fought back against the raid, throwing bottles and (rumor has it) bricks at the police. It began a days-long riot that fueled a movement with ripple effects on the community today.


“I think you could can blend in protest and awareness in the celebration,” Megan Grahm, a 18-year-old at University of Connecticut who identifies as asexual, told MTV News. She attended Pride to partake in the “celebration” of LGBTQ+ identities, however acknowledges the political importance of the occasion as well. She pointed to the use of Black Lives Matter and Protect Trans Girls signs by activists looking to remind people that those ideas have routinely been intersectional.


The people who attended the initial Pride parade, which marched as the Christopher Street Liberation Day in honor of the city street where Stonewall sits, expressed similar sentiments if they marched in 1970. And by the 1980s and 1990s, LGBTQ+ activists and groups like ACT UP also started addressing the AIDS epidemic. Other activists took up other battles: In 2015, the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges mandated that same-sex marriage be legalized across the nation — nevertheless just under per year later, a gunman opened fire at Pulse Nightclub, a gay bar in Orlando, Florida that was hosting “Latin night.” He killed 49 patrons, several of those people of color.


To this day LGBTQ+ Residents of the United States lack federal protections that other minorities have; in several states, someone can still be fired from their job, denied a lease, or barred from university based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Same-sex couples may even be banned from adopting children. Earlier this year, the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era protections for trans people and instituted a ban on trans members of the military.


“The starting [of the Trump presidency] was scary,” Oliver Trimmer, a 19-year-old trans man from Flemington, New Jersey, told MTV News. “I didn’t know what would happen to my healthcare. Was I still going have the ability to afford my hormone treatments? Would I still have the ability to get top surgery and have that not be an issue?”


Though LGBTQ+ discrmination existed before the Trump administration and will probably exist long immediately after, the FBI noticed hate crimes increased 17 percent soon after Trump was inaugurated, with trans females of color being especially vulnerable.


“Once [Trump] became president, people began saying stuff to [trans] kids in bathrooms [at my school] like, ‘Oh, you’re not allowed, this isn’t the correct gender,’” Trimmer mentioned. “Outwardly supporting Trump was used as leeway, saying its political speech as soon as in reality it was just blatant [transphobia] they attempted to blame on Trump or mention, ‘That’s just my political view.’”


Because of rising political tension and the perceived developments of Pride from its beginning conception, some members of the LGBTQ+ community opted to skip the Pride Parade altogether. Diego Fernandez-Pages, a 22-year-old Yale University graduate who identifies as gay, as a substitute attended the Queer and Trans Liberation March, which contained a rally in Central Park that same day — sans police and corporate sponserships.


He was compelled to prepare switch because of the “corporatization” of the parade and the prohibitive charges of several Pride-sanctioned events, which he says makes such occasions inaccessible for working class queer people. And Pride’s police presence has long been a contentious one. (Heritage of Pride, the primary corporation in back of NYC Pride events, released a statement late last year addressing several of those community concerns.)


“Pride has habitually been about fighting for queer and trans rights,” Fernandez-Pages told MTV News. “The Queer and Trans Liberation March is an actual protest, one that really adheres to the values of the queer community and the people who laid down their lives for the queer community.”


He’s not alone; tens of thousands of people went to option Pride events this year, or turned the more mainstream events into protests of their own. On June 29, a Black trans woman interrupted a drag show at the Stonewall Inn to protest mainstream Pride and to bring attention to the deaths of other Black trans women; per reports, some patrons tried to have her kicked out of the venue. And on Friday, June 28, LGBTQ+ activists like Emma González and New York City Councilman Corey Johnson paid homage to their roots at a rally outdoors Stonewall.


Watching from the crowd was Brandon Wolf, a 30-year LGBTQ+ activist with The Dru Project from Tallahassee, Florida, who survived the Pulse Nightclub shooting. His best friend Drew Leinonen was killed in the massacre, as was Drew’s partner Juan Guerrero. 


“The 50th anniversary of Stonewall is one of pride and joy, yet also one of reflection. The rally struck residence for me as a moment to celebrate how far we’ve come along with acknowledge the work we have left to do,” Wolf told MTV News.


“Pride, to this day, is a protest,” he continued. “A protest against discrimination. A protest against bigotry and hate. Yes, we celebrate with parades. Yes, we party with each other. Yet we also rally. And up until each person is truly equal, we must continue to rally.”