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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!

Previous Calls

March 20^th Pittsburgh,
anti-war call for a Radical Queer/Pink Bloc
On the weekend of March 20^th (M20) a regional convergence against wars and occupation will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Primarily organized by the Thomas Merton Center and Pittsburgh Organizing Group, M20 aims to organize a permitted mass mobilization alongside direct action targeting the local war machine.

Resyst is sending this call out to all radical queers and queer sympathizers to join us in Pittsburgh. Those who see the interconnectedness of all oppressions and struggles and who wish to ensure that a radical queer perspective is heard in the ongoing anti-war movement must join together. We will not allow our movement to be divided based on class, race, nation of origin, language, perceived or chosen gender, sexuality, income, size, perceived "ability", age, etc.