Written by Abby Garrett

In 2019, I attended the San Francisco Pride Parade. Surrounded by the biggest crowd I had ever seen, we waited for the event to start. I kept checking my phone. 30 minutes went by with no word, legs burning as we sat on the hot pavement which had been baking underneath the California sun. I checked my phone again, and an hour had gone by. The parade still hadn’t started. 

Around me, chatter erupted about protestors. Immediately, I thought of the kind I had seen in my community in Springfield, Missouri. Evangelical white men holding up giant signs reading, “homosexuality is sin” and blaring scriputre into a megaphone—the kind of religious extremist performances that plague every LGBTQ+ event and even our own college campus. My friends and I ran up the street to check it out only to find gay activists had chained themselves together across the street. Their linked arms were covered by rainbow painted plastic pipes and carrying signs that read  "Death to the Police State" and "Police are our enemies." These weren’t religious extremists, they were activists standing against the police and corporate involvement in pride. 

After this realization, things moved quickly. Helicopters came overhead, and there were police officers coming in from all angles. I heard the crowd cheer as a white unmarked van drove up, ready to throw all of the activists in and send them to jail. I was shocked there was no solidarity expressed by the crowd towards the protestors. 

I heard more and more enthusiasm from the crowd as protestors were surrounded. Had these people forgotten that for decades our community had been fighting against the police? Did they not realize that our pride celebration that started as a riot against the police, was turning into a colorful corporate parade? 

After the protestors were forced to leave, I stayed to watch the parade. My jaw hit the cement after I watched the expensive float drive past me. This included floats from Amazon, Netflix, Apple, T-Mobile, and all kinds of other business. None of these businesses have strong policies that support their LGBTQ+ employees. Many members of our community are poor and/or unsheltered. Celebrating Fortune 500 companies that steal our wages is not supporting the economic change our community so desperately needs. According to Missed Opportunities: National Estimates, LGBTQ young adults had a 120 percent higher risk of reporting homelessness compared to youth who identified as heterosexual and cisgender. The people in our community don’t want corporations waving a pride flag to get more business. We want livable wages and anti-discrimination policies. 

In addition to the exploitation of our community for profit, there is a long history of law enforcement targeting queer spaces and criminalizing LGBTQ+ people. LGBTQ+ history does not include protection by, or good relations with, law enforcement. Some may argue that the police keep us safe, or that they just need to be “reformed.” We need to end the conversation about police reform and look at the facts— the police in the United States of America exist to protect property, capitalist interest and to oppress marginalized groups. They do not keep us safe. As recently as 2003, LGBT+ people in the US could be jailed simply for acting on their identities. 

In 2015, 58% of transgender survey respondents reported mistreatment by police, including verbal harassment, physical or sexual assault, consistent misgendering, and being forced to perform sexual acts in exchange for not being arrested.  Around 50% of transgender survey respondents report being uncomfortable contacting police, even in an emergency.

Black transgender people reported even higher rates of biased harassment and assault (38%). 

A famous example of this is Marsha P. Johnson, the transgender drag queen sex worker who spearheaded the Stonewall uprising. Marsha spoke out against the police state and was quoted saying she was often arrested and that “she stopped counting after the 100th time.” She was once, in the late 1970s, even shot.

Our goals need to mirror the ones of early rights activists such as Marsha P. Johnson who said, “We need to see gay people liberated, free and with equal rights under the law.” Queer people are targets of the police state, and no cops belong at pride. Being consistently marketed by corporations without political commitment to better the lives of LGBTQ+ people in our country is not valuable to us or seen as “progress.” Corporations and the police state are enemies towards our community.