Queen Amor dancing at the US Supreme Court on March 26, 2013, in front of photos of LGBTQ people who died due to hate based on their perceived or actual gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.
Photo Credit: Alan L. Bounville
This June marks the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots. And though there have been many legislative and social victories for LGBTQ people since the summer of 69, they have often come at the cost of progressive values overall. The fight for queer rights has often been waged in the corporate sphere, bolstering it to the detriment of workers and those most marginalized in society, which disproportionately includes LGBTQ people, People of Color, cisgender women, disabled people, and those who present even remotely outside the rigid gender binary that is forced upon us at every public or private turn.
How did this happen?
In a word: corporatocracy.
Corporatocracy — A society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations.
Early in the founding years of the United States of America, the idea of the corporation was suspect. Laws started being passed in states and federally that slowly allowed groups to incorporate. Little by little corporations were able to acquire more power and more rights by legislation, adjudication, executive and extrajudicial action.
There are several touchstones of corporate power grabs over the centuries. The 1811 New York state law, the Act Relative to Incorporations for Manufacturing Purposes broadened the foundations set previously to let religious groups, municipalities, libraries, medical groups, and turnpikes incorporate, applying such structures to the manufacturing industry.
The 1811 New York state law, the Act Relative to Incorporations for Manufacturing Purposes as printed in the
1936 New York Annual Register and followed by relevant later legislation.
Flash forward to 2010 and the highly consequential US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where corporations were granted speech rights as if they were people, and it is clear we’ve come a long way from suspicion of corporations to today's corporate take-over of our democracy.
Back To Stonewall
Up to the point of Stonewall, the mainstream gay social movement activity consisted of white-dominated organizations like Daughters of Bilitus, Mattachine Society, or Transvesita Magazine. Patrons of Stonewall were not like those who led these organizations. Instead, they were people from diverse backgrounds—mostly trans people, gender non-conforming folks, fem gays, and People of Color—not afraid to kick a cop in the chest with their high heel. Or if they were afraid, they broke through that fear and did it anyway.
At the fifty year mark since those at Stonewall said FUCK IT, let us, the people who are living in one of the most economically unequal time in human history also say FUCK IT.
Stonewall was a reaction to the policing of queer bodies in queer spaces by law enforcement at the behest of society at large, especially those hellbent on eradicating queerness altogether. Today we still struggle against this kind of segregation, though there are more places today than in 1969 where queer people may feel safe. But safe-feeling spaces are a spec of what we deserve as human beings.
My Stonewall Reflections
I am not a person who advocates for kicking cops. But I am a person who advocates for making noise, primarily because without noise it can’t be clear if anyone is even listening. And the more noise we make, the more we move the conversation and action, both socially and legislatively, where we want it to go.
I come at all of this from my own discoveries. I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home where I didn’t dare share with anyone that I was gay. It is only by the grace of the seemingly never-ending process of coming out that started in my early adult years and continues to this day that I have become a loudmouth fully prepared at any moment to speak truth to power or hate.
The journey that runs concurrent to my spine-straightening-don’t-fuck-with-this-faggot identity blossoming is one of a person who longs for connection with others, especially while working towards greater truths. It’s why I walked across the USA or wrote and produced immersive plays like Adonis Memories. It’s why I am writing this article.
I want an unstoppable progressive movement to burgeon forth. I want a radical transformation. And I want it now.
As the 50th anniversary of Stonewall approaches, I think about how my 42 years of life fit into this greater history towards liberation, which is where Stonewall started. I feel inextricably tied to those who let their rage burst that June weekend almost fifty years ago. Because I too am enraged.
Those at Stonewall the weekend of the riots were not seen as elite by greater society. They were the castaways. When I think about the people at Stonewall then I think about my near quarter century of experience in a workforce that has never afforded me more than a gross income of more than $42,000 in a single year, most years far below that, many years at poverty wages.
I think about how I have been on and off of unemployment assistance for the past four years because none of my five part-time employers offer enough work for me to stay employed throughout the whole calendar year.
I think about how three white, cisgender, heterosexual men, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett, own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population combined. That's 160 million people or 63 million households.
I think about my struggles as a white, gay man and realize, this shit sucks.
March!
"Marching Any Ol' Way We Damn Well Please"
Two men (Jim Fouratt at right) holding Christopher Street Liberation Day banner, 1970. Photograph by Diana Davies. NYPL, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Diana Davies Papers. Copyright Diana Davies. Digital ID: 1619938
Two men (Jim Fouratt at right) holding Christopher Street Liberation Day banner, 1970. Photograph by Diana Davies. NYPL, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Diana Davies Papers. Copyright Diana Davies. Digital ID: 1619938
The summer of 1970, a year after the Stonewall riots, a march took place. It started at the Stonewall bar itself and ended in Central Park. I’ll say that again: in the summer of 1970, a march took place.
Pride For Sale
Fifty years later and we now have pride parades across the planet on the last weekend of June, the anniversary weekend of the Stonewall riots, and at all times of the year. But what we don’t have anymore are marches.
Sure, let’s be proud of advances that have been made in certain communities. But let’s not celebrate like we’ve made it to the end of the dream. Let’s wake up and see that we are nowhere near where we deserve to be in the struggle.
When you go to most pride parades today you see a sea of floats promoting large corporations. And then you see local organizations stuffed between this wasted glitz.
It’s as if corporations are saying, ‘Look at how awesome we are! (Don't look at the corporate welfare you give us through tax subsidies, labor-crushing wages, declining benefits, or our efforts to accumulate more corporate power.) Just look at our dazzling parade float that shows you we support you! Oh yeah, and thanks for spending your out of pocket money to buy our shit.'
I look at this annual display and think, What. The. For realz. FUCK! You support workplace policies for LGBT people but want to be the main source of control for resources and labor? Oh honey, NO!
This is why, as a working person who has been fucked by corporatocracy my whole life, this year and every year moving forward I will march. I will demand. I will MAKE NOISE!
Reclaim Pride
And I will march not with the staid New York City Pride Parade organized by Heritage of Pride but with the newly formed and substantial Reclaim Pride Coalition that gives zero fucks to imaginary beings like corporations and all the fucks to people like you and me.
Reclaim Pride will hold a march that will take place on the same day and at the same time as the Heritage of Pride corporate jack off fest. (Not that there’s anything wrong with a jack off fest. But when countless LGBTQ people are suffering in abject poverty, when the same corporations that support the jack off fest limit worker’s rights and upward mobility, then it’s time to bring our intersectional fierceness together sans big-monied interests.)
What’s great about the approach of the Reclaim Pride Coalition Queer Liberation March is that they are doing exactly what patrons at Stonewall did. They are ignoring the existing order of things and instead building their own world.
Instead of infiltrating the existing parade, they are taking a different route, literally. They will be marching from Stonewall to Central Park, just as was done in the early years of the march.
On the day of the stark differences between a glitzy corporate parade and a march full of people yearning to be free will be abundantly clear. At the march, people will marching for LGBTQ-related rights and social and economic justice for all, especially those most marginalized in our society. At the parade, people will be worshiping the corporate state.
Those of us who can see through the corporatocratic veil that is the brainstorming of corporations telling us in obvious and subversive ways to identify with them, want them, worship them will be marching with Reclaim Pride. Those who are clueless or don't care about poor queer people, like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), will undoubtedly be parading around as if the fight is over.
Fuck HRC
For those who are not aware, HRC purports to be the largest lobbying group for LGBTQ issues in the country.
Cathy Marino-Thomas, a local NYC activist, said it best about HRC:
“All my thoughts around this organization are rather ugly. I do not feel they are working for the betterment of the LGBTQ community but rather for the promotion of their own organization. I strongly feel that they have little motivation for actually finishing the "agenda" - why would they? They would all be unemployed! I do not feel their motives are pure. They are interested in credit for themselves - often swooping in after grassroots groups have done all the leg work.”
To put things further into perspective, one of HRC’s core annual projects, the Corporate Equality Index (CEI), rates a bazillion corporations on metrics associated solely to their written policies on issues related to LGBTQ people.
So a company like ExxonMobil can get a 95% Yay for Gay rating and also have their CEO elevated to Secretary of State in the administration of President Dumpster Fire. Oh yeah, and be leading the way to planetary destruction.
Or a company like WalMart can be number one on HRC’s CEI with a 100% rating. Wal fucking Mart!
And though I can see value in tracking how big business treats queer people on paper, big fucking deal. THAT’S what you think is a good use of your time, HRC? Really? REALLY! #FUCKHRC
Let's Do This!
It’s time we take back Pride. It’s time we take back the whole narrative. It’s time we the people lead us into the future we want. There are no saviors. There’s only us.
And while we march this pride, let’s use this time to reflect on what we are doing overall to get engaged in our own struggle for liberation.
The past few years have seen a resurgence of people-led movements. From school worker and teacher strikes to the Fight for Fifteen to eradicating terror squads like ICE to people doing their own every day actions for change, the Overton Window is on the move. And this time the window is moving in the right direction.
Justice Democrats recently said it best in an email to members:
“It’s called shifting the Overton Window, or transforming what’s considered common sense. And it’s a responsibility that Democrats abdicated for far too long. The problem is pretty simple: by going to the extreme right, Republicans have been able to make common-sense, wildly popular ideas like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and higher taxes on the rich seem like they’re on the far-left. And then the entire country is forced to have the political debate on the terms set by Republicans and their billionaire donors.In reality, each of these issues should be in the center. But that’s not how our political system works, and Democrats haven’t done enough to correct the record."
Is Hope on the Horizon?
It is if we claim responsibility for our destiny. It is if we do things small and big to demand what is rightfully ours. It is if we can recognize when a transformational moment is upon us and act in concert with countless others, like what Reclaim Pride offers us this golden anniversary of Stonewall.
We need to wake up and realize that the corporations and politicians that continue to squeeze us and wrest control of our government from us must be stopped. We need to grab the means of production. We need an intersectional worker’s revolution. And we need it now.
