Reclaim Pride: Embracing Our Revolutionary Roots
Students in Des Moines protesting an anti-trans law signed by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds in 2022.
What is Pride?
The celebration of Pride is a commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. In the 1960s, police regularly raided gay bars. Tensions boiled over in late June of 1969 when police raided the Stonewall Inn, brutalizing and arresting employees and patrons. Nearly a week of unrest followed. Thousands in New York City's Greenwich Village clashed with police, throwing objects at them and freeing their detained community members. Led by trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, the Queer community challenged state repression.
In 1987, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded in response to the US government’s handling of the AIDS epidemic. ACT UP effectively mobilized mass resistance against the government’s homophobia and disregard for people with AIDS, carrying on the anti-state/anti-police tradition of Stonewall. Their demonstrations were continually met with police brutality and arrests.
Cincinnati’s Pride festival of today bears little resemblance to its revolutionary heritage. Struggle against the state, police, and the ruling capitalist class it serves has been replaced by celebration of corporate Pride sponsors and heavy police presence. Like their corporate donors, Cincinnati Pride and many Pride celebrations across the country continue to whitewash a month meant to commemorate radical anti-police protests led by the Black queer community.
Instead of challenging our oppressors as those at Stonewall did, Cincinnati Pride asks us to hold hands and embrace them in the name of rainbow capitalism — the commodification and marketing of queer identities by corporations seeking profit. We reject this iteration of Pride which seeks to render the queer Liberation movement impotent in service of capitalism and colonialism. The history and principles of Stonewall must be upheld. Those who support queer liberation cannot let corporations and the state redirect the course of the movement away from its struggle.
Why “No Cops at Pride?”
Police at Pride, especially within the context of Stonewall, create an unsafe environment for the most marginalized members of our community. The police have a longstanding history of harassment, brutalization, and the enforcement of unjust laws upon Black and Brown communities, as well as queer, trans, and disabled people. People existing at the intersection of these identities are particularly vulnerable to police violence.
Pride cannot be a safe space to celebrate these identities under the patronage of the police. The Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) has a well-documented record of violence against underserved communities, notably in the 2001 shooting of unarmed Timothy Thomas (19) during a traffic stop — which was the 15th murder of a Black suspect by CPD within a period of five years — and, more recently, the murder of Ryan Hinton.
CPD also has a prominent history of violence against protestors, revealed by the brutal suppression of demonstrations in response to the murder of Thomas and again in 2020 during protests against the murder of George Floyd, in which protesters faced state violence, tear gas, and unlawful mass arrests. As Ohio continues repressive legislation against queer expression, the supervision of Pride festivities by CPD creates an unsafe environment for all of us, particularly for our most marginalized community members. The invited presence of CPD at Cincinnati Pride is antithetical to the message of Pride as a protest against the state and social persecution of queerness.
Corporations Betray the Queer Community
Pride has become a rainbow-coated commercial for corporations to lure in queer and progressive consumers. Rainbow capitalism allows corporations to cosplay as progressive by sponsoring Pride events and manufacturing Pride products while betraying progressive ideals; paying lip service to the queer liberation movement while lobbying for anti-queer legislation and providing financial contributions to conservative politicians.
Local company and major Cincy Pride sponsor P&G donated thousands to anti-queer lawmakers like Steve Scalise and Cathy McMorris Rodgers in 2024. Scalise voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, opposed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Hate Crimes Prevention act — a measure to expand the federal hate crime law to include a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and opposed repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. In 1997, Rodgers co-sponsored legislation that banned same-sex marriage in Washington state. Both voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which established federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages.
Capitalists have a vested interest in preserving historically bourgeois heteronormativity, traditional gender roles, and the nuclear family because they need the working class to reproduce the next generations of workers to be exploited. Traditional gender roles also entrench the power of the ruling class, most of whom are white cis men. As Sylvia Rivera said:
“This movement has become so capitalist... this is no longer my pride. I gave them their pride but they have not given me mine.”
The struggle for Queer liberation is a struggle against capitalism, as well as against the social constructs — like bourgeois heteronormativity — which uphold it. Just as welcomed police presence is incompatible with Pride and its history, so too is the administration of Pride by big corporations.
No Pride in Genocide
The commodification of our identities does not end with a simple extraction of profit; it is far more insidious than that. Queer liberation is also weaponized to justify imperialism, colonialism and genocide. “Israel” is sometimes described as “the only safe place for queer people in the Middle East,” which is ironic since gay marriages cannot be legally officiated there — an effort to continue their colonial conquest by populating the region with more and more "Israelis." This is a cynical ploy to co-opt the queer identity in service of a genocidal project and to make us complicit in the slaughter of Palestinians.
Major sponsors of Cincinnati Pride — and many other Pride festivals around the country — have deep financial ties to the Israeli apartheid state and benefit directly from genocide and occupation. Since the ongoing Nakba began in 1948, Zionist forces have forcibly displaced millions of Palestinians, and Israel continues to carry out a brutal settler-colonial project backed by U.S. imperialism. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, and entire regions have been turned into rubble and dust with U.S. weapons and funding.
Pride sponsors like Starbucks, Nestlé, L'Oréal, and Procter & Gamble have all faced sustained boycott campaigns, some for their ties to the Israeli military, others for their support for its apartheid economy in the forms of direct investments, partnerships with Israeli universities, or supply chain contracts that sustain the occupation. These same corporations profit off queer visibility in the U.S. while enabling the destruction of Palestinian life abroad, including queer Palestinians.
As long as Cincinnati Pride accepts sponsorships from genocide-enabling corporations, it chooses complicity over solidarity. It turns its back on the revolutionary history of Pride, it abandons the struggle for queer liberation at home, and it funnels blood money made abroad into the pockets of the ruling class. Are we willing to turn our backs on the Palestinian people — queer or otherwise — just because the state perpetrating it lets us have a Pride parade? If we seek true liberation then we must denounce these atrocities, we must stand with the Palestinians, and we must organize to dismantle the systems of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. None of us are free until all of us are free.
What’s Next?
What does Pride look like beyond the confines of corporate sponsored and police regulated festivities? We envision the Pride of the future to reflect its history as a movement of resistance and resilience within the queer community. We reject the pink-washed funding of our protest and celebration by exploitative corporations in the name of capitalist gain under the eye of a government that continues to enact physical and legislative violence against queer people. We choose to fight for a Pride by us and for us, in which the community can come together in defiance through mutual aid, resource distribution, and collective resistance to state repression.
Corporate Pride is a relatively new phenomenon, and one which can be rejected. We do not have to accept the false representation of our identities, communities, or history of resistance by harmful corporate and government entities. We will not submit to the orchestration of our celebrations by those who fight to suppress the marginalized on a local and global scale, then feign support when financial opportunity arises. The Pride of the future will represent queer struggle and queer joy. It will honor our past and present, and fight for the liberation of all oppressed and exploited peoples across the globe.