Pride

When I signed up to staff the voter registration table for Duluth Indivisible at our local Pride Festival, I hadn’t anticipated it being such a reunion of old friends. What a pleasant surprise when it was – friends and colleagues from work, the Women’s Coffeehouse, feminist activism, trainings, and former students. With all the hugs and smiles and glad tidings all around, it felt like a love fest. It seems appropriate because Pride is at its heart a festival of love and acceptance. 

The first Pride parades took place in June 1970, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising[i], and since that time, June has been Pride Month. But here in Duluth, the annual Pride celebration takes place over Labor Day weekend, a sort of last hurrah of the summer.  Its stated mission is “to serve the people of the Duluth-Superior area community’s diverse sexual and gender identities by organizing safe and inclusive events that celebrate equality and self-expression.” The atmosphere was indeed one of joyous self-expression – a celebration of each person’s unique and precious being, and also of deep acceptance and connection. The bright colors of the rainbow were in evidence everywhere as were the radiant smiles among the festival goers.

As I left, I was struck by my recognition of how safe I had felt in that space.  It was quite a contrast to how unsafe I have felt in this country – despite my relative privilege -- ever since Trump took office, unleashing a zeitgeist of hate and fear.  In many ways, it seems that the Trump administration’s mission is the exact opposite of that of Pride – that it is to create a culture that denigrates diversity; officially recognizes only two forms of gender identity – cis heterosexual male and female; threatens with firing, arrest, denial of funds, and physical violence those who disagree, criticize, protest, and with imprisonment, detention, deportation, and disappearance those who are immigrants, people of color, laborers in the field and on our homes; that magnifies disparities of wealth and inequalities of race, sex and gender, nationality, and ability; seeks to destroy any basis for fair and free elections ever again in this country; that terrorizes cities with authoritarian takeover with tanks and National Guard troops; that seeks to destroy the health, well-being, and lives of all of us through the denial of life-saving vaccines and science-based medical research as well as healthcare for the poorest among us, through its dedication to the gun lobby and assault rifles, and through its wanton destruction of environmental policies to protect our air and water and the promotion of the burning of fossil fuels that are destroying a climate that supports life on this planet. Is it any wonder that I have not felt safe since Trump took office?

But for a brief moment, at the Pride festival, I felt safe. It was like being transported into a world the way it should be  -- a world of love, care, understanding, and pure joy.  It’s ironic that I felt so safe, so free from harm there – for LGBTQAI people have been some of those most targeted by the Trump administration for discrimination and hate -- from book banning to reinstating the ban on transgender folk in the military and in sports to denying gender-affirming health care to threats to gay marriage and more. Hate crimes against the LGBTQ community have risen steeply as Trump’s base has been emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric. 

Even more ironic is the fact that following the school shooting at Anunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis last week, conservatives have focused on the fact that the shooter was apparently trans, and used that as a reason to label all trans folks as inherently unstable and prone to violence. Matt Walsh, a right-wing podcaster, went so far as to label the shooting “trans terrorism.”  This has given fan to the flames of transphobia throughout the country, as if the lives of the rest of us were endangered by the existence of trans folks, when in fact it is trans folk whose existence is threatened.  Conservative commentators gave no notice to the hate the shooter had expressed towards so many groups of people – Blacks, Mexicans, Christians, and Jews, nor to the arsenal of weapons he used to kill and maim.  It is the combination of hate and easy access to guns, not gender identity, that is deadly in this country.[ii] 

The 2014 film, Pride, is one of my favorite movies.  It is based on the true story of how in 1984 members of the LGBTQ community in Great Britain came to the support of Welsh coal miners when the police harassment they had experienced lessened as police focused on the striking miners instead.  They raised funds to help the striking miners and their families and joined them in their strike. Though at first greeted with homophobia from the miners, the LGBTQ community  members continued their support, and over time the two groups formed friendships and bonds of solidarity. 

The most stirring part of the film is when one by one the miners, their families and friends, and the members of the LGBTQ community rise and join in singing the feminist anthem, “Bread and Roses.”  I had a similar moment when one by one the audience members at a Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert concert rose, linked arms, and sang together, “Singing for Our Lives.”

“We are gay and lesbian people, and we are singing, singing for our lives. . ./ “We are gay and straight together, and we are singing, singing for our lives. . . /We are a peaceful, loving people, and we are singing, singing for our lives. . . “

Friendship and solidarity, safety and support, freedom and acceptance, love and joy were all in abundance at the Pride festival – as the line from “Bread and Roses” goes – “in all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,” “a peaceful, loving people . . . together .. . singing for our lives.”

[i] The Stonewall uprising was a series of demonstrations against the police raid on the gay community at the Stonewall Inn in New York City on June 28, 1969.  It was a turning point that galvanized the gay rights movement in the US.

[ii] The US has the highest number of school shootings of any country in the world.