REVOLUTIONARY ROOTS
S ummer is around the corner, but Ms. Corona is still lingering around. To clarify that’s COVID-19’S drag name. This means Pridefest, one of the largest summer festivals in Denver, will be moving off of the streets and into a virtual space.
It’s sad that hundreds of rainbow flags will not descend on downtown Denver next month. But this pause might be what our community needs to revisit the origins of Pride.
By now it’s common knowledge that the June celebrations known as Pride originated from the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969. This was the uprising that sparked queer liberation around the world. It was a cry against police brutality and other forms of violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Drag queens, butch lesbians, transwomen, gay men and mostly black and Latinx community members took to the streets in civil unrest and revolutionary action. And while contemporary Pride parades across the nation have been colorful displays of celebration they are not the instrument of change they started as.
It wasn’t long before the revolutionary roots of Pride morphed into cash pipelines for cities. The needs of individuals impacted by violence and poverty that sparked the movement quickly were neglected.
By 1973, only four years since Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera who was an activist with the Gay Liberation Front and a participant during the Stonewall Riots, waited all day to get on the mic at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally.
Gays and lesbians at the time saw transwomen and drag queens as a stain to the larger gay movement and didn’t want them marching at the front of the parade that day. History would show how very wrong they were. When Rivera finally took the mic the boos erupted.
“Y’all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail …,” Rivera said over a howling crowd.
This rally would eventually transform into the New York City Gay Pride Parade and become the world’s largest Pride event. A precursor to Pride festivals across the nation and the world.
Denver experienced its own Stonewall moment during a 1973 gay revolt. Gay men at the time were being over-policed and arrested for indecent behavior. The Gay Coalition of Denver sued the city and hundreds of supporters came out to testify.
This helped fuel civil rights activists like Donaciano Martinez, who like Rivera 1,700 miles away, was a member of the Colorado Springs chapter of the Gay Liberation Front. Martinez, Rivera and other activists of color knew the importance of speaking about class, gender and race within the gay movement.
When Rivera took the stage little did she know that marginalization would continue beyond her years. She spoke about the violence that
she and other incarcerated LGBTQ people had experienced. But the crowd didn’t feel transgender people were part of their movement, especially people experiencing homelessness, incarceration and poverty.
“The people are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a white middle-class club,” Rivera said.
Pridefest and mainstream gay movements continue to tailor toward this very same club and exclude the needs of marginalized identities. These festivals across the country bring millions in revenue to cities which means corporate sponsorship and heavy policing for security.
That day the speaker after Rivera was Jean O’leary, a lesbian feminist, who saw transwomen as disruptive to the mainstream gay rights movement. O’leary would later help start The Gay and Lesbian Task Force an advocacy group that has been criticized in the past for using respectability politics.
This tactic to silence, minimize and self-police other members within our communities is what happened to Rivera then, and continues now. Pridefests are instruments of respectability politics. Party roars are allowed, but shouts for justice are not.
And still it feels like there’s a place for what this festival provides despite its corporate takeover and its skewed politics. It provides a space for discovery.
The first time I pulled up to Bannock Street for Pridefest, I was still learning my city as much as myself and my identities. I hadn’t seen these street intersections decorated in rainbows before.
My high school sweetheart and I had signed up as outreach volunteers for a local Latinx reproductive rights organization. We were stationed at Youth Alley which was a drug and alcohol-free zone within the Pridefest grounds dedicated exclusively for young people.
As we walked up, we saw the wave of rainbows. It was the first time I felt the deep presence of LGBTQ people in our state.
I also quickly discovered that the parade was officially named the Coors Light Pride Parade. How could my community put the name of a company front and center with a history of funding antiunion, anti-environmental, anti-immigrant and antichoice policies, candidates and organizations?
Dollar signs, that’s how. The Center on Colfax puts on Pridefest and has for decades. The festival is The Center’s largest fundraiser which pulls in around $1 million for the organization and generates the city revenue of about $25 million.
Some of the other conflicts are around scheduling. Pridefest in Denver always seems to land during two prominent ceremonies for black and Latinx communities. The first being Juneteenth
Weekend which commemorates the news that Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed all slaves to be free. The second is Xupantla, an indigenous ceremony celebrating summer solstice that has been organized by Group Tlaloc, a danza azteca group in Denver, for decades. People shouldn’t have to choose between a ceremony, commemoration and celebration.
And if we want to be precise here, the Stonewall Riots happened on June 28, 1969. Denver celebrates Pride a whole week earlier. I know at this point it feels like nitpicking, but my criticisms are centered in hope for transformation.
For such a long time I’ve wanted Pridefest to return to its roots, but then I learned they’ve been this way the entire time. The booing of Rivera and hate toward transpeople is part of the festival’s legacy.
It’s time to envision a new gathering that pays tribute to our ancestors and elders like Rivera and Martinez from the start. A gathering without the presence of police and that uplifts queer and small businesses instead of corporations.
A space where our elders and our queer siblings don’t have to wait all day for the mic just to get booed. This is a time to imagine a festival that shakes the rainbow status quo, and we have Ms. Corona to thank for that.