If you are not ready to move aside and elevate Black and brown trans and queer leadership, don't invoke the names of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera this #PrideMonth.
Last #PrideMonth, I wrote about the LGBTQ+ community has never adequately dealt with how white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, and other systems of oppression have corroded the aims of those original frontliners. out.com/pride/2019/5/3…
1) Community gatekeepers (powerful, mostly white, cis, able-bodied wealthy nonprofit directors, CEOs, political insiders) need to elevate grassroots Black and Brown leadership.
2) Most resources and funding should go to efforts supporting those who are low-income, incarcerated, homeless, and sex workers. (These are experiences that Sylvia, Marsha, and Miss Major lived.)
3) Prioritize Black and Brown-led organizations and initiatives, especially in your local area, for donations. Pride campaigns should NOT prioritize organizations w/ multimillion-dollar budgets that rarely ever engage the most marginalized groups within our communities.
4) National LGBTQ+ nonprofits and initiatives should release annual data on how their work transforms conditions for specific groups within our community. For example, if you claim to care about Black trans women or trans immigrants, be transparent about it.
5) Elevate opportunities for queer + trans organizers + activists on the ground to be highlighted for their work on the frontlines. Those who spend most of their time on the streets, working hard and thanklessly like Sylvia and Marsha, to the front, not influencers.
6) Remove police presence from our events and spaces and invest in safety groups developed by organizers and activists in communities across the country.
7) Commit to an LGBTQ+ political platform that centers defunding and abolishing ICE, prisons, and the military (institutions that never had our best interests at heart) and decriminalizing HIV and sex work. We must build out restorative justice modalities when harm occurs.
8) Demand that healthcare is accessible for all (particularly those who are disabled, trans and gender-nonconforming, and/or living with HIV and AIDS). The healthcare fight must center inclusive reproductive justice and mental health.
9) Prioritize our youth by protecting them in our flawed educational system and demanding that they learn about their identities, their history, and holistic sexual health.
10) Prioritize our elders by ensuring that they have adequate housing, healthcare, and respect.
11) Demand that all political leaders who vie for our vote are fighting explicitly in the interest of all parts of our community AND support LGBTQ+ leaders with actual queer politics in line with the original radical Stonewall vision.
