OccuPride 2012: “Community Not Commodity”
The Pride celebration has become increasingly commercialized, co-opted by corporate interests that use our struggle for liberation as a market for commodities and as a way to boost profit. These interests – the 1% – parade status quo candidates and parties for our consumption, wearing a mask of progressive LGBT equality while marginalizing and criminalizing the poor and disempowered. In doing so they seek to divide our community, catering only to those of us with money to spend; but the queer and trans communities are more than the affluent; we are also the disempowered, the homeless, the sick, the sufferers of discrimination and violence.
So we must Occupy Pride. We honor our radical roots in our fight for full liberation for all of us – women, people of color, immigrants, the disabled, all the oppressed and marginalized. We are diverse, joined together in struggle – we are the 99%. We must tear down the barriers that divide us to build and nurture an inclusive community, celebrating our forgotten histories and those of us excluded from corporate Pride. Together we will reclaim the parade, bringing it back to its origins: a march for the liberation of all oppressed peoples! Housing, health care, living wages, protection from discrimination – human rights are queer rights! There are no spectators.
This is about Pride, not profit.
We are a movement, not a market.
We are community, not commodity!
