Police and infighting among gay-rights organizations
Politics,
From an uprising at a small club in Greenwich Village 50 years ago to a celebration around the globe this weekend, one thing has remained constant: Pride.
LGBTQ rights activists and their allies know there is still much work to be done, but this is a weekend to celebrate.
The Stonewall Riots in 1969 are commonly referred to as “the birth of the gay rights movement,” but the struggle had been going on since at least 1924, with the creation of the Society for Human Rights in Chicago.
More groups took up the cause in the 1950s, during the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, when gays as lesbians were viewed as a security risk.
“The activists or this era fought for civil rights framed as inclusion in the society at large, focusing on employment rights and military service,” Jason Baumann wrote in the introduction of “The Stonewall Reader,” a collections of articles related to the uprising drawn by the New York Public Library’s archives released to coincide with the anniversary.
But Stonewall jump-started the fight. A year after the riots, thousands of people held a march that ended in Central
Park. The march would later become New York City’s annual LGBTQ Pride march.
Attracting more and more tourists every Pride season, the event have also turned into a golden tourism opportunity for the city. Since 2017, Channel 7 broadcasts it live.
The celebratory atmosphere, however, is not without capitalism and controversy.
This year, nearly 700 contingents will parade down Fifth Ave. Sunday, as 150,000 people are expected to attend. Corporate sponsors include T-Mobile, Delta Airlines and MasterCard.
In 2017, the first Pride after the election of Donald Trump, different organizations participated in the march as the “Resistance Coalition.” The group, with a heavy antiNYPD stance, wanted the police to issue a formal apology for the part it played in Stonewall (Police Commissioner James O’Neill would only formally apologize to the community in 2019).
Activists from the coalition didn’t feel that they were being treated fairly, and after the 2018 march, it was clear that the relationship with Heritage of Pride (HOP), the group that has run the march since 1984, wasn’t going anywhere. “The corporations and the police continued their attempt to co-opt and pinkwash the movement, while repressing young Black and Brown LGBTQ folks,” activist Christian Cobb wrote on workers.org.
In 2019, the group, now named “Reclaim Pride Coalition” (RPC) decided to plan a separate march to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. HOP “has turned [the march] into a corporate showcase,” RPC said in a statement.
“We talked [to HOP] last year, we tried to reach an agreement on something to do, [but] we have very different agendas,” longtime activist, and one of the insurgent march’s organizers Ann Northrop told the Daily News. “We got realistic about that and decided to go our separate ways.”
This year, RPC’s Queer Liberation March, aims to repeat the essence of the first demonstration that commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Mainly, a protest against police brutality. It will begin at 9:30 a.m. on Seventh Ave south of Christopher St.
But some division can’t dampen the spirit of Pride — especially for those at Stonewall.
“It’s very important that people understand what Stonewall was about,” 76year-old Molly Bennett Aitken, who took part in the uprising, told The News. ”It was all about being accepted and respected and treated the way everyone in America should be treated, with understanding and respect.
“The Pride celebrations [that] show the recognition of gay people, to the point that you have [gay politician Pete] Buttigieg running for president,” she said, “[they] all came because of the sacrifice of the people that night at the Stonewall who stood up publicly to demand gay rights.”