Most Recent Action!
Queering Pride 2005: To Hell with
Equal Rights...we want Liberation! No more, no less...
On June 18th, Pittsburgh will have its annual Pride
parade, held in downtown Pittsburgh to celebrate the
GLBT community, and "our" persistent struggle for civil
rights and social justice. This year the official
slogan is "Equal rights no more no less," but much like
slogans in previous years this one is equally as
euphemized, watered down, and inadequate. For instance,
what does equality mean for the GLBT community? The
commonsense assumption is that equality is having the
same rights as heterosexuals. But is equality really
attainable for the GLBT community?
In the aftermath of the Stonewall
riots during the first ever Pride march (1970), then
known as the Christopher street fair, banners read
"Queer Liberation," not "We want a piece of the pie."
What was demanded was the autonomy for all forms of
sexual expression, an end to the policing of public
affection, and an immediate halt to the institutional
socialization of homophobia, genderphobia, and
heterosexism. Demanding liberation and demanding
equality are two totally different things. One is saying
we want the autonomy to control our own lives, and the
other is saying we want the ability to utilize our
class, sex, and race privileges to their fullest extent,
the same as our heterosexual counter-parts.
Our society has demonstrated time
and time again that there can be no such thing as
equality within it's current racist, sexist, classist,
gender-normative institutions, and framework. Equality
is made impossible by a system that is designed to give
power and privilege to a minority above all others. As
radical queers we are fighting for liberation, not a
token equality that cannot be achieved within our
current society, because nothing short of the complete
transformation of this society will give us our
liberation.
As radical queers we oppose
militarism, capitalism, systems of assigned privilege,
state sanctioned relationships such as marriage, and all
forms of oppression. Assimilation is oppression for
those of us who can't play the part of the well behaved
queers.
Join the radical queer contingent
at this year's Pride parade as we celebrate our
queerness, and challenge the whitewashing,
mainstreaming, and assimilation of our community,
because we are not just like your neighbor, nor do we
want to be.
This year we will be doing another
pink & black bloc with color guard flags, and bucket
drums, so bring your home made drums, noisemakers, flags
(not rainbow), balloons, bandanas, and hankies. We
encourage freaky bikes (low riders, tall, and dyke
trykes), banners, puppets, jugglers, gender
non-conformity, signs, people in drag, whistles, lots of
kink, and fetishtastic goodies.
We will be meeting 10:30 am, the
morning of Saturday June the 18th @ Fifth Ave. and Ross
St. downtown. Look for the RESYST (Queer Mutiny) banner.
Contact:
jenniferq_83@hotmail.com for more info.
* Check out the coverage and more
photos on
Pittsburgh Indymedia!
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