On June 8th, two protests took place in LA. One of the protests aimed to protect undocumented immigrants at risk of being removed from their families and communities and deported by ICE. The protest represented a valiant attempt to fight back against the racism and exploitation of the ruling elites.
The second protest was LA Pride, which was drastically different. The actual event was overflowing with police and hosted a slew of corporate floats sponsored by Delta, Corona, Coca-Cola, Sony and others. Pride attendees had been reassured by the event organizers:
“In light of recent reports of ICE activity across the region, we want our community — especially our undocumented, immigrant and mixed-status families — to know that we are actively working with local Law Enforcement to ensure a safe and welcoming environment at all Pride events.”
In other words, Pride will be safe because the LAPD will protect you, an implausible premise as those protesting for the safety of immigrants were subjected to riot control measures by the National Guard. The difference in protests marks that LA Pride is a subset of a broader problem: the efforts of the state and corporations to whitewash their culpability in our oppression.
The police pretend to be queer friendly while arresting and incarcerating us at disproportionate levels. Corporations are content to engage in meaningless virtue signaling while being culpable in disproportionate levels of homelessness and financial stress affecting queer people. Worse still is how pride organizers have bought and perpetuated their lies.
At its best, pride is a celebration of queer expression, joy and self-determination. It protests the institutions intent on our exploitation and demonization. However, all too often, pride instead celebrates the two forces most responsible for the oppression of queer people: corporations and the state.
Queer people are likely to be unhoused, especially at younger ages. A survey by the Trevor Project found that 28 percent of LGBTQ youth experience homelessness or housing instability, and that experiencing homeless or housing instability causes severe mental health problems. Poverty among queer children transcends into adulthood. UCLA’s Williams Institute found that 21.6 percent of queer adults are living in poverty compared to 15.7 percent of straight adults.
Some may argue that this problem is not caused by corporations. After all, many queer children become unhoused because they are rejected or abused by their family members, and it’s easy to see how childhood housing instability makes it more likely for someone to experience poverty as an adult. However, corporations are directly contributing to queer poverty by using discriminatory housing and employment practices.
A study by CAP found that between 2021 and 2022, nearly 30 percent of queer people had suffered housing discrimination or harassment and that half of queer people had suffered from workplace discrimination or harassment.
Corporate profiteering in the healthcare industry also directly contributes to queer poverty. The CDC reports that between 1981 and 1990, over 100,000 Americans with AIDS died. Such a monumental public health crisis demanded a speedy response, but that didn’t happen.
Corporations and the government slow-walked the development of AIDS drugs. When the first drug, AZT, was finally developed in 1987, Burroughs Wellcome Co. charged $10,000 annually for it, which prevented many from acquiring it. In March 1987, the AIDS Advocacy group ACT UP marched on Wall Street to demand, among other things, “immediate availability of [AIDS] drugs at affordable prices. Curb your greed!” Because of the advocacy of ACT UP, Burroughs Wellcome Co. was forced to reduce the price of AZT to $3,200 a year.
Today, health care greed remains a central element in queer oppression. HIV PrEP medication costs up to $2,000 a month without healthcare insurance, and, in the past year, one in three queer people reported their inability to access healthcare due to the cost. All financially stressed people are negatively impacted by the healthcare industry, but as the response to the AIDS epidemic shows, corporations deem queer lives to be less valuable than straight lives, thereby creating a type of oppression specific to queer people.
It used to be undeniable that the state perpetuates queer oppression. Sodomy and cross dressing were explicitly criminalized, with the effort to remove queer people from society intensifying from the late 1940s into the 1960s. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which required the firing of all queer people from federal jobs. The Executive Order was successful in purging 7,000 to 10,000 queer people from the government. At the same time, police were raiding gay bars and arrested queer people by the thousands. The names of queer people arrested by police were reported in local newspapers, which led to the loss of employment, loss of family support and suicide attempts.
Today, the state continues to perpetuate queer oppression. That should be an obvious fact, but because state oppression is focused on the most vulnerable queer people, including POC and trans people, it is largely ignored.
Trans people are explicitly discriminated against by the laws of many states. It is a crime in Florida for trans people to go to a bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. Odessa, Texas went one step further by allowing residents to sue trans people for upwards of $10,000 if they dare break the bathroom ban. While states explicitly attempt to legislate trans people out of existence, police arrest and incarcerate all queer people at disproportionately high levels.
According to Alexi Jones writing for the Prison Policy Initiative, LGB people are “incarcerated at three times the rate of straight people,” with lesbian and bisexual women being especially likely to be targeted. Trans people, who are frequently profiled by police as sex workers, are even more likely to be targeted. Jones states, “1 in 6 trans people have been incarcerated at some point, and nearly half (47 percent) of Black trans people have been incarcerated.”
Like the rest of the country, the LAPD targets transgender, gender-non-conforming and intersex (TGI) people. The Vera Institute of Justice concluded that despite limited data for LA County, “The demographics and drivers of incarceration for TGI [Transgender, Gender Diverse, and Intersex] people in LA County appear consistent with what is happening across the country.”
LA Pride’s statement that the police will protect undocumented queer people is laughable. The LAPD fails to protect the queer community as a whole, and should not be trusted to protect our most vulnerable members.
Why are mainstream queer advocates deferential to corporations and the state? Why are financial stress and mass incarceration rarely brought up by mainstream queer advocates? In short, intersectionality.
The most privileged members of marginalized groups are better able to platform themselves because of their superior access to capital and other levers of power. In the mainstream feminist movement, middle class white women have disproportionate power. Similarly, in the mainstream queer liberation movement, gay middle class white men have disproportionate power.
The issue of gay marriage is viewed to be virtually synonymous with queer liberation, while issues that disproportionately effect more marginalized people are ignored. As a gay white man, it may be possible for me to achieve liberation without having to end corporate exploitation or mass incarceration. For me, gay marriage may be nearly sufficient to achieve equality. But for those further down the hierarchy, it is wholly insufficient.
An intersectional queer liberation movement must learn that the police and corporations will only seek surface level change while keeping the prevailing oppressive institutions intact. A more radical movement is needed to liberate all members of the community.
The alternative to corporatized Pride is to use grassroots action to fight for our own liberation. “My basic sense of it has always been to get people to understand that in the long run they themselves are the only protection they have against violence or injustice,” Ella Baker said of her time in the Civil Rights Movement. Queer advocates throughout history have internalized this lesson.
In the wake of the Stonewall Uprising, Masha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). The organization provided housing and food to young trans people who had been shunned by their families. In the wake of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of ACT UP protesters participated in civil disobedience to force action by the government. Only by using our collective power, by forming alternative institutions and doing grassroots activism, can we chip away at corporate and state oppression.
Evan Sevaly CM ’26 is from Montana and is President of the CMC Prison Education Project.
Facebook Comments