The Daily - A Clash Over Inclusion at Pride

Episode Date: June 29, 2019

Fifty years after the Stonewall riots, as the largest L.G.B.T.Q. Pride celebration in the world takes place in New York this weekend, some leaders of the community are asking a difficult question: What’s lost as the Pride movement becomes mainstream? Guests: Natalie Kitroeff, a business reporter for The New York Times, spoke with Shane O’Neill, a video editor. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Divisions have emerged in the L.G.B.T.Q. community over the role of corporate sponsors and of the police in Pride celebrations.Who threw the first brick during the Stonewall uprising? Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably a myth — and that’s O.K. Here’s why.To capture the evolving ways in which we describe ourselves, The Times asked readers to tell us who they are. More than 5,000 people wrote in.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. This weekend, as the largest gay pride celebration in the world takes place in New York, some leaders of the LGBT community are asking a difficult question. What's lost as their movement becomes so mainstream? Natalie Kitcherew speaks with our colleague, Shane O'Neill. It's Saturday, June 29th. Shane, how did Pride begin?

That's a big question, Natalie. What we think of today as like gay pride, which I think when you say gay pride to someone, you think of, you know, go-go boys on a float in a big city, and you think of, you know, rainbows and partying in the streets in the hot summer sun. That can be traced to the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969. So, first of all, it's kind of impossible to really give a monolithic story of Stonewall. No one can 100% agree on what exactly happened that night. Here are the facts that we do know, which is that the Stonewall Inn was a bar owned by the mafia that catered to gay clientele. I also use the word gay because that's the way that most of the people who were there would have identified their community, although today we would probably call it LGBT. And at 1.20 a.m. on June 28th, the police raided that bar.

That in itself wasn't unusual. There were a lot of police raids on gay bars at the time. What was unusual is that the patrons didn't disperse, that they stuck around, and they ended up resisting. And the crowd grew outside of the bar, and it grew into what some people call a riot, some people call a resistance, some people call an uprising or a rebellion. That lasted several nights. 2, 4, 6, 8, gay, cis, and straight, gay! 2, 4, 6, 8, gay, cis, and straight, gay! That lasted several nights.

It also directly led to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front. The Gay Liberation Front was the name first chosen in June 1969, following the riots, to describe the organization of homosexuals come together, on the spur of the moment almost, to assert their pride, their feeling that they had been denied their rights and that they were very angry. One year after Stonewall was the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march. These are mostly independent organizations all across the country.

There are somewhere between 60 and 75 independent groups across the United States, maybe more now because they keep growing up overnight. There were three simultaneous marches in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. In New York City, the route, I believe, began at Stonewall and marched all the way up 7th Avenue to Central Park, where they had a gay-in, which is like a B-in. Do you know what a B-in is? No. So a B-in, it was like, as I understand it, in the 60s, a B-in was like a politicized way to hang out with your friends,

to dance, party, take off your clothes, take drugs, and hang out. Can you tell me what you feel about the homophile movement? I think it's great. I think it's really dynamite. And I think the only way to achieve it is through force and marches like this. And the mood was celebratory and huge, and it was really unprecedented. Why? Why was it unprecedented? It was unprecedented, A, because people just hadn't seen that many gay people in one place probably ever at that point, going into the streets and saying that this is who they are secondly a lot of gay social life even among people who were out was focused on bars

which means it was focused on nighttime which means that it was sequestered to you know private space and this was happening during the daylight in public with you know tons of people just like marching into the streets and saying i'm not not ashamed of who I am. So Stonewall directly led to what we think of now as like a pride parade. It's sort of taken for granted now, but at the time, I think it's hard for me to even understand what a seismic shift this was. This was the birth of what became known as gay liberation. The freedoms to love and sometimes even to love a bit in public that belong to the heterosexuals in this country, and we're going to have them. And that meant less respectability politics and more radical

in your face, I am who I am, and you better accept me for who I am. So with gay liberation, you have a different kind of strategy that isn't about fitting in. It's more about fighting back. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. But also a lot has changed in the 49 years since the first Pride March happened. It's huge just in volume and in scope. They wanted to make sure that there was enough room for the anticipated 3 million people next year.

This year we only have 2.5 million. That's it. You're also seeing really all sorts of people. You're seeing people from all over the world who are cheering you on from the sidelines. There's also just the typical trappings. A lot of techno, a lot of DJs, a lot of go-go boys

and harnesses and thongs and rainbow everything. And there's also a lot of floats that are sponsored by corporations. I appreciate you mentioning back here we have a couple of sponsors. Bud Light supports the LGBTQ community. Thank you Bud Light. That's right behind them, Sky Vodka, born in San Francisco. And not everyone is happy about that. So, this year, on the same day as the Mainstream Pride March, there's also a protest march that's happening at the same time.

And there are these two women, one who's working with the mainstream Pride march and one who's working with the protest march. And they sort of represent this divide that's happening in the LGBT community. I recently sat down with both of these women to get a better understanding of what that divide's all about. Hi there, how are you? I'm good, my name's Shane O'Neill. We're here, this is Eric. We're here with This is Eric. We're here with the New York Times.

We're here for the meeting for the Reclaim Pride Coalition. First, I met Anne Northrup. She's working with a group called Reclaim Pride, and they're organizing what they're calling the Queer Liberation March, which is a direct protest to the mainstream heritage of Pride March, which is the big march that most people think of when you say the Pride Parade. I went to one of their planning meetings to talk to her. Good to see you. Yes, hi.

We met at the Stonewall. She was born in Connecticut. She came from a family of Republicans, as she said. I grew up in the 50s and 60s in the suburbs thinking Leave it to Beaver was a documentary. And she had a really successful career in mainstream journalism. She worked for Good Morning America and for CBS Morning News for a long time until 1987. And I'd been unhappy for a long time. And I just finally said, that's it. I quit. She left that world to pursue more direct LGBT organizing. She's just been around for a lot of LGBT organizing in the

last three decades. And who's the other person you met on the other side of this? The other person I talked to was Kathy Renna. Kathy Renna. Hey, how are you? How are you? It's so good to see you. How are you? I'm all right. Who has worked with Heritage of Pride for a long time. She's a very high-achieving woman. You went to med school?

At Georgetown for a year. And it just, it didn't feel like what I wanted to do. I took a leave and I never looked back. I started volunteering for GLAAD and that was that. That led to her current career, which has been exclusively an LGBT advocacy organization since then. I asked both women about what their first experience with Pride marches were. My then girlfriend and I went and watched the parade. I don't think we joined it the first time we went to watch it. I think we just watched. And they both had sort of similar stories. They had both gone with the woman they were dating at the time. Yeah, I remember coming in on the train for my first Pride and just that coming up the steps. It was a lot. I mean, it just felt super overwhelming.

And both of them kind of had their minds blown by the whole event. To see all the drag queens, to see the Go-Go Boys, it was incredible. It was, like, overpowering. So these two women have a pretty similar path. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're very similar women in a lot of ways. They're both white lesbians of a certain age. They're both based in New York City. They've both been working in LGBT advocacy for the last 30 years,

and they're in the same orbit and the same profession, essentially. They're both based in New York City. They've both been working in LGBT advocacy for the last 30 years. And they're in the same orbit and the same profession, essentially. So over the years, I've done a lot of different actions and groups and stuff. But one constant has been that I've become sick and tired of the Heritage of Pride Pride Parade. And so have all my friends. And so, it turns turns out have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, others. This year for Pride, they're really on different paths. We'll be right back. So when did things start to change for Anne and Kathy? I don't have a specific time when things changed for Anne Northrup, but she herself says that she just eventually started to grow more and more tired of the corporate presence at the Pride March. We have seen it evolve gradually to this corporate Mardi Gras, circuit party, whatever it is.

And it has completely lost the political values, the values of justice. And I thought that was just tragic and atrocious and disgusting, frankly. What's her problem with the corporations? She has several problems with the corporate presence at Pride. For one thing,

she feels like it takes away from what she viewed as the initial message of Pride, which is that you're supposed to go into the streets and advocate for yourself. Because to me, the beauty of the Pride parade was that it brought the community into the streets and made us free to air our grievances, celebrate our victories, see each other and enjoy the day, mourn our losses. And we've lost all that. And what did we lose it to? We lost it to corporate marketing. She told me specifically that she resents the fact that corporations sort of get big advertising moments out of this and don't have accountability for how they spend their money or what they donate to

or what their corporate practices are outside of the parade. They're there to market to what they perceive as an affluent gay community. And then they turn around the next day and spend all their money buying Republican right wing politicians who they need to pass whatever regulations they care about. And those Republican politicians are taking away all our rights, putting really virulently anti-LGBT judges on the federal benches. That's a practice that some people call pinkwashing, which is to say trying to wash over or paint over policies that are harmful to LGBT people by positioning yourself as an ally. So why are we handing over the pride parade to these people? They may help us here and there, but certainly not to the extent that they are doing bad things for us.

And what does Kathy have to say about that? Kathy has a very different take on it. First of all, there's the practical matter that they are predicting that upwards of maybe 4 million people are visiting New York City for this march. I mean, that's a lot of people. In order to have an event that can support that many people and be on a grand level, that requires lots of money, and corporations are a way to get some of that money. That's one of her big points. The other point that she made is...

You know, we are much more demanding in the sense that we want true partnership. We want these corporations to be doing things all year round. This is not just a fly a rainbow flag in June. Basically, rather than throwing your hands up and walking away from the table if you disapprove of a corporation, she was saying that they have an opportunity to leverage their relationship to affect change within these corporations. It's not about you're just going to write us a check and you're going to have a float. Is that conversation happening at Heritage of Pride with the sponsors? Absolutely.

So are there sponsors? All organizations are having that conversation, I think. Did she have any examples of when the group has been able to do something like that? Well, that's the thing. No. Are there sponsors or contingents that you've rejected because of how they treated their LGBT employees? No. I mean, they asked them. They asked them the questions, you know, like, what are your policies?

You know, whether it's for same-sex couples, do you have domestic partner benefits? And now we have marriage, obviously, so it's a little different. But, you know, what are your policies for trans employees? You know, what are you doing? And how can we help you do better? And but have there, to your knowledge, been corporations that have been like, we want to be a part of it? And Hop has been like, oh, you don't meet our standards.

Like, no, you're not that I know of. And I think that, you know, if there are issues, then those issues get brought up and they talk about them. So basically what I was getting at here is I was trying to say, can you give me a concrete example of this happening where you leveraged your relationship with a corporation to change a policy that you didn't like. And Kathy wasn't able to give me an example of that. I also reached out to the executive director of Heritage of Pride and asked him the same thing. He also wasn't able to give me a specific example of this happening. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I guess what I've heard some queer people say about the value of having corporations involved is that having these giant companies with the rainbow flag, it can make people feel validated, feel recognized by their employers or their banks or just the culture at large. And maybe that's better than the alternative.

And Kathy would say that's a sign of progress, that a lot of these relationships with corporations are coming from LGBT affinity groups within the companies. Right. I think when you look at some of these corporations, they have really large marching contingents. Those are employees. You know, those are folks who actually work there and they are being out and visible and making it clear to the to the company they work for that they're out and visible. That in and of itself is a statement. Kathy makes the argument that having a corporate culture that expects that you support LGBT employees is really important, specifically at a time when maybe there isn't enough government protection, that it's important that corporations pick that up

and take up the mantle of protecting LGBT employees. I think what Anne would say in response to that is that it's a position of privilege to work for a corporation or really to work at all in 2019. Okay, so corporations involved in Pride, that's a big point of contention. What else does Reclaim Pride have a problem with? The biggest problem that Reclaim Pride has with other than corporate sponsorship is police presence in the march. The police are not kind to LGBT people and haven't been for many years. This has historical precedence, obviously.

The Stonewall Rebellion was a direct response to police behavior. There's a lot of historical harassment that informed the gay liberation movement that gave us pride in the first place. In terms of the present, a lot of people also have problems with the way that the police have been interacting in the first place. In terms of the present, a lot of people also have problems with the way that the police have been interacting with the LGBT community.

The NYPD is still picking up trans kids just for being out in the street. So we are not happy about the conduct of the NYPD or a lot of police departments. They're still horrible to communities of color. They're still killing black men. They inspire fear in communities of color. Specifically people of color, undocumented people, trans people, sex workers. These are all groups of people that disproportionately have bad experiences with police officers. And so we are not inviting them into our march. And we're a protest march anyway, so I don't see why they think they, anyone would think they would be in our march. So the police are not going to be absent, but they're not going to be given any floats. There are no floats in the Reclaim Pride Parade, but they're not going to be given any floats or contingents or any place of prominence,

whereas they will in the Heritage of Pride Parade. So what does Kathy think about the issue of the police in the march? Kathy views their inclusion in the march as a question of inclusion. Well, you know, as far as Heritage of Pride is concerned, it's a free speech march. They're part of our community. So for one thing, we have queer police officers. And we don't bar folks who are part of the community from participating.

In fact, I mean, I think a lot of people don't know this, but the LGBT officers, they had to sue the police department in the 90s to wear their uniforms. They weren't allowed to wear their uniforms in the parade. So, you know, it's a very complex thing. Again, it's about inclusion, not exclusion. And, you know, as I hear from folks on the sidelines, from folks in the larger community all the time, how do we create change within some of these institutions, particularly the ones that are, you know, really, really challenging? And I would say law enforcement is one of those. It's by having folks who are out, who can be out.

As far as their participation, it's also a question of practicality. She referenced that there's going to be millions of people there. They're going to need crowd control. They're going to need safety measures. You simply can't have an event of that size and scope in this day and age without a police presence and a real, real commitment to safety. It sounds like both of these groups view themselves as being inclusive, but they have really different visions of what that means and of how to advocate for queer rights at this moment and about how much progress has been made. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think both Heritage of Pride and Reclaim Pride would say that they are more inclusive than the other group for one reason or another. What does inclusion look like? That's the big question.

Does inclusion mean getting as many people to an event as possible? I mean, if that's the case, then Heritage of Pride is more inclusive. Does inclusion mean bringing up the voices of people who are excluded by a corporate culture or who feel victimized by police? It's a big question and there's not an easy answer. There's also, it's like, you can't just go back to Stonewall and say, this is what they would have wanted. The response to Stonewall and the Christopher Street Liberation March were super radical ideas. But then by the same token, Mark Siegel himself, who was at Stonewall and who was part of the GLF said, yeah, if we could have gotten a corporate

sponsor in 1970, we would have. I think it's also what we're seeing is that the fact that pinkwashing can even exist as a concept is predicated on the fact that being LGBT is something that's good and that that dollar is valuable to a corporation. Right. These are big questions and there aren't easy answers. There isn't a solution that is going to make everyone equally happy. And that's both a simple and profound fact. I think if we knew the best way to protect everyone in the LGBT community, we would do it. I think you're seeing two different strategies for that being played out in the marches this year. In some ways, the debate that happened 50 years ago between the buttoned-up advocates who were focused on acceptance from the mainstream culture

and the more radical protesters who were willing to cause problems and fight back when they were attacked, that debate is playing out today in a way. How do you best protect the people that are in this community? What is the best strategy for doing that? Do you accept all of these donations and all of this participation that is often led by queer people inside of major corporations? Or do you create a radically different space that doesn't include some actors, some forces that have made others in our community feel unsafe. Yes, absolutely. I think that that debate is still happening. And yet then and now, I still sort of see that as a false binary. There were lots of people who were involved

in respectability politics who ended up being radicalized after Stonewall. There's a lot of people who advocated for middle-class values, but also saw the value in gay liberation. For that matter, I know there are people who are going to be at both marches this weekend. I don't think it's necessarily a strict binary between the two of them, but I think that the discussion is salient, and it's really central to what it means to be LGBT in 2019. Shane, thank you so much.

Natalie, truly my pleasure. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.