All I see out there are gay rights, trans rights, whatever parades.
And people actually show up. like wth. given that it’s 5% population max.
Where are the worker rights parades?
US workers are 80% of the population (sans elderly, kids and disabled).
Why is noone doing it? Why is noone organizing Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”?
Why does US east coastline still owned by billionaires and we have to ask permission to walk on that sand?
Where is healthcare for all?
Where are bike lines?
Why dont we nationalize and own the oil fields in US?
Where are mandatory 1 month vacations? (even fucking China has them). ?
Lots of people would march for those demands.
Wt guys? just fucking why?
Disagree that it’s “5% of the population max” — I’ve seen estimates that around 10% of the population are lgbtq… but even assuming it’s 5%, in a country of 340 mil, that comes out to 17 million people. And a bunch of people at pride are straight, so it’s no wonder why they draw in such huge numbers each year.
Regardless… what does gay pride have to do with workers rights? Why does that make you mad — they’re not preventing anyone else from organizing? And from my experience, lgbtq folks are very vocal about workers rights specifically (given the discrimination they face in the workplace for being gay/trans/etc)
And unlike some other movements, there is a very rooted history of public demonstration by the gay/trans community given laws specifically preventing them from gathering in public. In many ways, pride parades represent gay/trans people reaffirming their rights to literally just be in public together without being arrested.
So yeah… I get that there should be more public demonstrations — I’m all for that. But leave gay/trans rights alone please lol
I feel like ever since the term shifted from “gay liberation” to “gay pride” it has hindered the movement in a lot of ways. Liberation tells you what this is about, pride tells you… You’re proud? Good for you. Lots of people are proud, but not all people need liberation (or, at least, not everyone thinks they need it).
I vote we go back to calling it Liberation, and instead of bickering over why people are at the queer event and not a workers event, we start organizing monthly or bimonthly events, a queer/LGBT liberation event, a women’s liberation event, a worker’s liberation event, Hispanic Liberation event… Let’s pepper the calendar with parties and parades and protests while drilling into people’s minds that we are all deserving of respect, autonomy, and liberation.
Not sure how well I said all that. I’m about 5 boozy horchatas in, and I hate to do the “as a gay man” thing, but I feel like I should mention I am, in fact, a gay, and I quite enjoy pride and what it stands for
I don’t think they’re angry at pride parades, they’re angry that there’s no similar parades/demonstrations for workers rights, and using pride parade as an example to be emulated…
Op:
Their view of pride parades sounds pretty negative to me.
OP compares it to 80% of the population being workers, yet no-one is showing up for those rallys. I guess OP fails to see why workers do not feel the same urgency to attend rallys that lgbtq people do.
I see where OP is coming from. Workers are being treated increasingly worse, but there seems to be no collective response so far. Sure, workers are not being discriminated against and murdered (yet), but if that’s the standard for protests, it’s unreasonably high.