Queer liberation — not rainbow capitalism!

Queer Liberation March 2019. Getty images.

Pride is a month-long celebration, protest, and time of political activism in cities across the United States. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the events at Stonewall, a confrontation between police and LGBT people in New York City. Many that participated in the rebellion were working class people of color fighting back against a police raid which never should have happened according to the NYPD’s own admission this year. Yet as the month comes to a close, we observe that the meaning of pride has become obscured by corporations who seek to take advantage of this moment -- motivated by profit and not a genuine interest in LGBT issues. Police are uncritically accepted at pride, ignoring their history and present-day targeting of trans individuals. Activists seeking to reclaim Pride and integrate it with left, anti-imperialist politics have struggled with these barriers over the last 50 years and continue to fight for liberation of queer identities against a backdrop of neo-liberalism, whitewashing, gender conformity, and political conservatism in the United States.
   
One of the most prominent activists at the site of the Stonewall confrontation 50 years ago was Sylvia Ray Riveria, who “threw the first brick” at police during the raid. Throughout her life, Riveria sought inclusion for marginalized queer identities: trans people, homeless queer youth, and people of color. She established one of the first organizations in New York City that was focused on giving shelter to homeless queer youth, the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). As a latina and drag queen, Riveria herself faced oppression and stigma from the mainstream LGBT movement due to her 'otherness'. In an article from OutHistory, historian Martin Duberman stated the following about her struggle: “Sylvia was from the wrong ethnic group, from the wrong side of the tracks, wearing the wrong clothes – managing single-handedly and simultaneously to embody several frightening, overlapping categories of Otherness.” Riveria would not allow the mainstream LGBT movement to forget about those who were cast as outsiders. She emphasized an intersectional approach to LGBT activism, one that demanded inclusion and respect from the majority cis, white, gender-conforming strands of activism which led the push for marriage equality in the United States. The mainstream movement, however, sidelined issues of violence against trans persons and police brutality. By contrast, Riveria fought for trans people and drag culture to be included in gay rights legislation in New York. Riveria shows us what is possible when activists put up real resistance – yet her life also reminds us that the mainstream LGBT movement in the United States still cares more about appearing acceptable to liberals than it does pushing for radical social change and struggling for the vulnerable groups of LGBT people.

Today’s ongoing fight for queer liberation is inspired by the insurgency of past generations of working class queers. In New York City on June 30th, upwards of 150,000 people marched and four million people participated in the largest celebration of LGBT visibility to date. In parallel, a competing event took place, seeking to reclaim pride from corporations and police, the Queer Liberation March. “I am out here at the Queer Liberation March to be with our radical folks who are really fighting for the things that people like Marsha and Sylvia were fighting for at the original Stonewall riots,” said Raquel Willis, the first trans woman to be executive editor of Out magazine, in an interview with Democracy Now! “We’re talking about decriminalization. We’re talking about ending the violence that our people are facing across different sectors in the world. And so, it’s important to be here today.” Reclaim Pride was brought together by socialist activists and members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. At the march police were told to stay out of it and corporations were not allowed to bring their branded floats and corporate logos.

As M.E. Obrein wrote in her recent article “Fifty Years of Queer Insurgency,” queer left voices such as those participating in reclaim pride have reopened debate on the relationship between the anti-capitalist left and queer and trans people.  Reclaim Pride’s “Why We March” statement says that

“We March in our communities’ tradition of resistance against police, state, and societal oppression, a tradition that is epitomized and symbolized by the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. … We March against the exploitation of our communities for profit and against corporate and state pinkwashing, as displayed in Pride celebrations worldwide, including the NYC Pride Parade. We March in opposition to transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry based on religious affiliation, classism, ableism, audism, ageism, all other forms of oppression, and the violence that accompanies them in the U.S. and globally. … We March against domestic and global neoliberalism and the ascendance of the far right, against poverty and economic inequality, against U.S. military aggression, and against the threat that is climate change. … We March to celebrate our communities and history, in solidarity with other oppressed groups, and to demand social and economic justice worldwide—we March for Liberation!”

Many in the left have a lack of interest  in queer and trans issues, believing that these issues lead to a politics of neoliberal individualism. This is seen in how TERFs have attempted lure cis socialists into their circles with only a vauge understanding of sexual and gender politics. M.E. Obrein views the reformist left as “seeing trans rights as the embodiment of anti-materialist, culturalist, identitarian, and trivial concerns indulged by freaks who have taken the left hostage, sabotaging the opportunity to win over the normie masses to socialism.” She continues:

"The trans and trans-adjacent militants battling this brand of left transphobia have developed deep suspicions of “anti-idpol” or “anti-identitarian” politics, growing in popularity among some sections of the far left. We need a communist politics of identity, these trans militants argue, not an opposition between communism and identity politics. Or, to borrow a phrase from Peter Frase, we need to keep socialism weird."

Today, those fighting for a socialist future and against imperialism must take inspiration from past exemplars of queer activism like Sylvia Ray Riveria. They must demand that left politics apply an intersectional analysis of the oppression they are fighting against. Economic justice and the possibility of a better future for the working class will not be realized until those most vulnerable are lifted up -- not until we witness an end to the murders of trans women of color, not until police as an institution are abolished, not until LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination in housing and employment. Mainstream pride cares more about the middle-class white LGBT community. Rainbow capitalism may celebrate LGBT visibility but it does not challenge the contradictions of class and race present in the gay liberation movement today nor does it advance the socialist politics so desperately needed in the near future.