CIVIL RIGHTS
In Step With Black America, Reclaim Pride to March
Producers of 2019 Queer Liberation March say its mission demands it take the streets
Reclaim Pride’s Queer Liberation March held on Pride Sunday last June 30.
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
The Reclaim Pride Coalition
(RPC) — the queer
activist group that last
June 30 staged a Queer
Liberation March as an alternative
to what it said was an overly corporatized
Heritage of Pride/ World-
Pride March — has announced it
will move forward with a march on
the last Sunday of June again this
year.
In the wake of the outrage that
boiled over with the Memorial Day
police killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, the group, in a June
4 press release stated, “We have
determined that the only way to
move forward is to once again
have a physical March through
the streets of Manhattan on Pride
Sunday, June 28. Our March will
center the movement for Black
Lives and focus on the violence
committed against Black bodies by
law enforcement and the mass incarceration
state.”
The march — which will take
place on the 50th anniversary of
the Christopher Street Liberation
Day March commemorating the
Stonewall riots one year earlier —
will be called the Queer Liberation
March for Black Lives and Against
Police Brutality.
The group stated, “This moment,
the principles of the 1970 march,
and the RPC founding mission demand”
that the queer community
take to the streets again.
In its release, RPC noted that the
“most marginalized” groups within
the Black community — including
transgender people, immigrants,
and those living with disabilities
— face the greatest hardships in
American society and also argued
that transgender women of color
and Black youth played integral
roles in the June 1969 events at
the Stonewall. The post-Stonewall
Gay Liberation Front, the release
added, fostered dialogue with
Black activist Huey Newton and
the Black Panthers.
The release singled out the NYPD
as a major contributor to racial
and other social injustice in the
city, and recounted the experience
of RPC member Jason Rosenberg,
who sustained injuries to his head
and his arm when police attacked
him with batons and punches on
Fifth Avenue at 14th Street on
June 2, just minutes after the 8
p.m. curfew took effect.
Noting that Rosenberg was denied
medical attention for fi ve
hours while in custody, RPC added,
“Jason was not alone in sustaining
injuries or in being denied
care that night. And we are certain
that the same is true for many of
DONNA ACETO
the hundreds of Black protestors
arrested over the course of the last
week.”
The RPC release emphasized that
the location and time of the June
28 event have not been set yet, and
it also made clear the group “will
continue to seek guidance from
the Black Queer Community and
our Elders to program meaningful
actions… On June 28th we will all
explore what the future of Racial
Justice looks like.”
On June 1, out gay State Senator
Brad Hoylman also made the case
that Pride this year should be focused
on police and other violence
against the Black community and
called on Heritage of Pride to cancel
its plans for a virtual Pride celebration
to be aired on WABC 7.
“Today, as Pride Month begins
and protests for racial justice
sweep the nation, I’m calling on
Heritage of Pride to cancel conventional
Pride celebrations and
return to the radical roots of the
modern LGBTQ movement: a protest
against bigotry, racism, homophobia,
transphobia, and police
brutality,” the senator said.
In response to RPC’s plans, Hoylman,
in a written statement, said,
“I believe that New York City’s LGBTQ
community should use Pride
month to focus on the ongoing
fi ght for racial justice and against
police brutality, including that infl
icted on Black transgender women
— a struggle that dates back to
the Stonewall uprising. Therefore,
I’m strongly supportive of Reclaim
Pride’s plan to use its non-commercial
march as a vehicle to center
Black voices and Black experiences,
which have too often been
marginalized in our community.
I’d urge Reclaim Pride to continue
seeking input from the Black LGBTQ
community in formulating
these plans.”
Jay W. Walker, an RPC spokesperson,
clarifi ed two issues that
were absent from the release. The
announcement this week is only
news now because the group had
earlier suspended planning on a
Pride Sunday march because of
the coronavirus pandemic. In early
April, RPC announced it was temporarily
redirecting its efforts to
providing relief and assistance to
queer New Yorkers particularly affected
by the pandemic.
“Once the crisis started hitting
the community and the reality of
what we were facing settled in, we
were able to pivot and say, ‘Actually,
we don’t know if there is going
to be a public gathering of Pride
this year,’” Quito Ziegler, a member
of the Reclaim Pride Coalition, told
the newspaper at the time.
Walker emphasized that participants
would be “strongly” encouraged
to wear masks and that
event marshals would “strongly”
encourage “the best social distancing.”
RPC will also be distributing
masks and hand sanitizer during
the event.
The release did not mention
whether RPC would seek an NYPD
permit for the event, as it had last
year, but Walker clarifi ed that “At
present, we have no plans to seek
a permit.”
Police authorization for an event
focused on decrying police violence
might be a confusing message for
RPC to put out, and in any event it
is unlikely that Mayor Bill de Blasio,
who weeks ago said no permits
would be issued for the many large
events staged in the city in June,
would agree to waiving that edict.
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