How it started
From the first to the last day of June, a growing global community celebrates »Pride Month«. This is in remembrance of the Stonewall Riots: In June 1969, there was an uprising in the New York neighborhood of Greenwich Village, which remains firmly entrenched in the collective memory of the queer movement even 54 years later. After police repeatedly harassed guests – mainly drag queens, Trans* people, and People of Color – at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, these individuals, along with passersby, began to resist the frequent controls and raids of that time.
The police were unsettled and began releasing visitors more quickly. Simultaneously, released guests ran to the phone booths to call their friends. The Christopher Street began to fill up. To regain control, the police tried to arrest individuals. At that moment, the first stone was thrown. It hit a police car that was supposed to transport a lesbian woman. This sparked an uprising that would go down in history: the Stonewall Riots on Christopher Street. For six days, battles raged between the police and the LGBTQI* community in the streets of Manhattan. Leftist groups, including sectors of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and many others, came to support.
Michael Fader (a Stonewall regular):
“We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration… Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. We weren’t going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it.”
Racism and Poverty
The area around the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village was marked by poverty and homelessness. Many queer youths and young adults, most of them People of Color, slept in the parks around the Stonewall Inn. Unlike the rather bourgeois activists of the early queer movement, education was not an option for them. They were the ones who initiated the legendary uprising on Christopher Street on June 28, 1969. Two trans women were at the forefront: Latina Silvia Rivera and Black sex worker Marsha P. Johnson. Rivera repeatedly emphasized in interviews after the uprising that it was carried by homeless youths, just as she herself was homeless.
Capitalist Co-Optation
Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Nivea, Deutsche Bahn, banks, Daimler, BMW, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, H&M, Bild-Zeitung, Lockheed Martin, and many more – they all adorn themselves with rainbow flags and »Love is Love« slogans in various forms for a month. The same goes for NATO and the police. The police now employ migrant, gay, and lesbian »diversity officers«, and a trans woman in the Bundeswehr is prominently featured in all media. At the Christopher Street Day parades across the country, they all now participate: pharmaceutical companies, social media corporations, and the automotive industry.
Advertising with rainbow flags has become profitable. It appeals to a financially strong gay, lesbian, and trans middle class, who identify with these symbols and proudly display them during the few weeks of relative freedom from fear in the summer. Quickly forgotten is the fact that the large queer majority has little money and access to these goods: Queers, especially Trans* people are still disproportionately affected by poverty and homelessness and find themselves in precarious employment. For trans people, living with a corrected name and gender entry involves an exorbitant financial effort, which is out of reach for many. So, it remains a class issue whether a self-determined queer life is possible.
Queer Liberation
Fighting for queer liberation also means fighting against oppression, exploitation, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Let us therefore fight together in Pride Month, just like on any other day, for a world where everyone can live freely and self-determined. For a revolutionary Pride Month instead of pinkwashing and rainbow capitalism!
