It’s the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riot, and this pride month is going to be a hell storm of rainbow capitalism and historical revisionism.
To help counter the mainstream trivialization of Stonewall, we invite you to join our contingent in this year’s Pride Parade – Sunday, June 30th – organized around the theme that “Stonewall was a rebellion against police brutality.” Ours will be a breath of fresh air vs. the corporate Pride of beer and bank floats, as we get relevant, radical LGBTQ politics in front of an audience of 1 million+ people.
These politics – of solidarity with all oppressed groups, opposition to U.S. wars and police violence, and a rejection of capitalism in a world where 26 billionaires own more than ½ the world’s population – were what animated the Stonewall movement following the 1969 riots.
At a time when the Trump administration relentlessly chips away at LGBTQ rights, neoliberal Democrats and their “non-profit” gay toadies give us little more than tokenism. Besides betraying the spirit of Stonewall while pretending to celebrate it, they set a disastrous political course for LGBTQs and others.
In a world where overtly bigoted, violent governments are taking over more and more countries, endless wars, refugee crises, dictators, and potentially planet-ending climate crisis, we urgently need a very different path.
We need a rebirth of the independent, radical politics that gave the Stonewall movement and other movements of the day – Black Power, women’s liberation, the environmental and anti-war movements – the power to make rapid, sweeping changes.
The true legacy of Stonewall and those other movements was that their power drew from the efforts of ordinary people like ourselves, rather than the wealthy and their politicians who benefit from the status quo, to make change.
Please join us!
Our contingent this year is proudly co-sponsored by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America!! We invite other organizations to co-sponsor as well!
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Here’s the itinerary for the Sunday, June 30th contingent:
10 am – for those who can, meet up at the contingent location (announced by the Pride Cmte just a few days before the parade) to assemble banners, signs etc. For those who give us their email address and / or cell #, we’ll notify you of the location for this once the Pride Cmte shares the location with us – FB message us or send an email with the subject line “Stonewall Pride Contingent” to LGBTliberation@aol.com
11 am – everyone else, meet up in front of the Uptown Target store, 4466 N. Broadway, 1 block south of the main exit of the ‘Wilson’ Red Line el stop. We strongly encourage all those participating to take the Red Line el to the meet up points, as bus and car traffic will be snarled due to street closures.
Plenty of water and sunscreen will be available. If you are not able to participate in the entire march, we encourage you to attend the first (the best!) part of it, and then drop out when you need to. There are a handful of el stops fairly close to the parade route to which we can direct you if you need to leave early.