STONEWALL 50/ WORLDPRIDE
Gay Liberation Front Reunites at WorldPride
Activists share memories, refl ect on evolution of LGBTQ marches, rights
BY MATT TRACY
Surviving members of the
Gay Liberation Front
gathered together at
WorldPride on June 30 in
the city where they seized the momentum
of the Stonewall Uprising
and pioneered the modern LGBTQ
rights movement fi ve decades ago.
Some members of that organization
took part in the Reclaim
Pride Coalition’s Queer Liberation
March, while others participated
in Heritage of Pride’s (HOP) march,
where GLF served as a grand marshal.
A select few planned on participating
in both events on the
same day.
“It’s been an amazing journey
for 50 years that started basically
in a rec room in a church where
the Gay Liberation Front met,” said
Perry Brass, who joined the organization
in 1969 and played a key
role in leading the organization’s
newspaper, dubbed Come Out.
“There were about 100 of us.”
GLF was known to advocate for
LGBTQ rights with a strong emphasis
on intersectionality and
freedom of expression. They allied
themselves with leftist groups of
the time, from the Black Panthers
to anti-war groups and feminists,
under the common goal of advancing
issues of social justice that still
resonate to this day.
Multiple GLF members who
were taking part in the WorldPride
festivities noted the explosive difference
between the fi rst gay liberation
march in 1970 and the
WorldPride event of 2019, which
was the largest in the world.
“To begin with, there was no
Pride,” Brass said at Madison
Square Park just moments before
the GLF contingent stepped off at
the HOP march. “It began with the
Christopher Street Day Liberation
March and it was gay liberation
week in New York. We claimed this
whole week and the march would
be the culmination of it. All these
young people came in. We fed them
and found places for them to stay.
There was almost no press coverage
of that week. The only press
Veterans of the Gay Liberation Front marching as grand marshals in Sunday’s WorldPride March.
Kathleen Wakeham said joining the Gay Liberation Front was like “a breath of fresh air.”
coverage we had was from the international
press.”
Kathleen Wakeham, a GLF alum
who found out about the organization
while she was attending Columbia
University on a part-time
basis, described it as a “breath of
fresh air” and said “none of this
would have happened” this year
without the activism of that era.
“We were just a bunch of straggling
kids who didn’t want our lives
to be invaded or be fi red at work,”
said Wakeham, who also opted to
attend the main HOP march. “We
didn’t want to be assaulted when
we walked down the street, which
happened to me quite a few times.
To see all of this is really amazing,
it’s wonderful.”
She added, “We felt we were on
the verge of a revolution because we
were all leftists and we felt either
you do something or you stay at
MICHAEL LUONGO
MATT TRACY
home and cry. Some of our slogans
were, ‘Get out of the closet and into
the streets.’ Because if you stay in
the closet, nothing happens.”
Some ideological differences
among the GLF members emerged
when they spoke about why they
decided to march in either the HOP
march or Reclaim Pride’s Queer
Liberation March, which was organized
by folks who grew frustrated
with the growing corporate
and police presence at an annual
march that was originally sparked
by police brutality at Stonewall.
Ellen Shumsky, who witnessed
the events of Stonewall and subsequently
joined GLF as a photographer,
spent her day marching in
the Queer Liberation March, which
started at Sheridan Square at 9:30
a.m. and concluded with a 1 p.m.
rally at Central Park. That march
had a strong activist vibe and featured
a cross-section of people who
put the spotlight on marginalized
groups like trans women of color
and sex workers.
“For the last number of years, I
have found the other march to be
very unappealing,” said Shumsky,
who delivered a speech at the afternoon
rally about coming of age
as a lesbian and her involvement in
GLF and other groups. “I don’t like
the commercialization of it and I
feel like it’s become a big party. It’s
just lost the political energy of the
earlier movement. When I heard
about Reclaim Pride, I said, ‘That’s
for me.’”
Other GLF members offered different
perspectives of the marches.
Wakeham and Jason Victor Serinus,
who launched GLF’s chapter
in New Haven, Connecticut, defended
HOP even as they acknowledged
the way things have changed
over the years.
“The fi rst march had no corporate
fl oats and all that. As I’ve
gotten older, I don’t see things in
black and white,” Serinus said
while pointing to examples of other
ways he has straddled the fence
on certain issues: At times, he
has pushed back against police in
demonstrations, but at other times
he has supported police. “I begin
to see nuanced arguments. I think
the Reclaim march is fi ne. I don’t
agree with it totally. I also know
you can’t do this without corporate
sponsorship.”
Wakeham, meanwhile, argued
that large companies supporting
Pride can lead to more support
from allies.
“They say, ‘Oh, this is a corporate
march.’ But if a corporation is
sponsoring our march, they cannot
fi re us,” she said. “Straight people
around here too can see that we
don’t have horns and a tail.”
Regardless of some differences,
GLF members still stood together
and echoed each other’s sentiments
when they reminisced about their
activism. They expressed sadness
as they invoked the GLF members
who have since died saying those
➤ GLF VETS, continued on p.23
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