{"id":242332,"date":"2021-07-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/remembering-the-history-of-pride-parades\/"},"modified":"2021-07-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T07:00:00","slug":"remembering-the-history-of-pride-parades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/remembering-the-history-of-pride-parades\/","title":{"rendered":"Recordando la historia de los desfiles del orgullo"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Makena Huey<\/p>\n

From the initial riot that inspired June\u2019s Pride month parades to the protests supporting Black Lives Matter, both had the same goal: ending the police brutality of a marginalized community. Current Black activists are echoing the demands of the original Black activists who advanced the LGBTQ rights movements just over 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

Pride began not as a colorful parade but as a violent protest against police brutality.<\/p>\n

Local organizations have expressed similar statements of solidarity and intersectionality.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the nation rages and mourns in the wake of stolen Black lives, I can\u2019t help but reflect on our shared experiences,\u201d Fernando Zweifach L\u00f3pez, executive director of San Diego Pride, wrote in a June 1, 2020 website post. \u201cPride was a riot against legal state-sanctioned police violence long before it was a celebration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Remembering
A protest against police harassment (Photos courtesy Lambda Archives)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sodomy was illegal in California until 1975, and people who did not conform to what was considered appropriate sexual behavior were often arrested and harassed, according to Lillian Faderman\u2019s \u201cLGBTQ in San Diego: A History of Persecution, Battles, and Triumphs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intimidation of the gay community by the police in the 1950s and through much of the \u201860s was really disgusting,\u201d said Faderman, an LGBTQ historian based in San Diego. \u201c… Gay people were presumptive criminals, constantly harassed by the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

The LGBTQ community adopted several tactics that the Black community utilized during the \u201850s and \u201860s, including sit-ins, and Faderman said progress would not have been possible without the peaceful and non-peaceful protests of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf peaceful protests had worked in those days, I\u2019m sure there would have been peaceful protests but … it really took young gay people to say, \u2018We are not having any of this anymore,\u2019\u201d Faderman said in a phone interview. \u201cIt took their anger to finally call attention to the way the gay community was abused.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the primary catalysts of the LGBTQ rights movement and modern pride parades, according to CNN, was the Stonwall Riots, which began June 28, 1969 after New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn \u2014 a gay club in Greenwich Village, New York \u2014\u00a0 and arrested 13 people. Infuriated by the police harassment and other forms of descrimination, customers and community members remained outside the bar and began throwing objects at the police. This raid sparked six consecutive days of violent protests against oppression and police brutality.<\/p>\n

On June 28, 1970, the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, thousands of people participated in the country\u2019s first gay pride parade. Located in Manhattan, this event was known as Christopher Street Liberation Day, according to www.History.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Remembering
Christine Kehoe campaigning in 1993.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhat the pride parades were really all about was commemorating gay people not being victims, standing up, and it\u2019s not that it was glorifying violence but it was saying, \u2018This is our pain, we\u2019re crying out,\u201d Faderman said.<\/p>\n

San Diego\u2019s first official pride parade occurred in 1975, one year after a local sergeant reportedly denied activists a permit and threatened arrest. This event was preceded by Gay Liberation Front\u2019s \u201cgay-in\u201d at Presidio park in 1974, the city\u2019s first gay protest in 1971 outside of the San Diego Police Headquarters, and the May Company protest in 1974, according to Faderman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a general consensus that they were sick and tired of laying low and hiding,\u201d said Ken Selnick, archivist at Lambda Archives of San Diego, who describes the relationship between the LGBTQ community and the police at the time as \u201ccontentious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, the San Diego police began to lose credibility and several LGBTQ officers served as agents of change, even attending pride parades as a display of support, Selnick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was certainly polar opposite from the oppressive nature of it back in the \u201860s and \u201870s,\u201d Selnick said.<\/p>\n

However, despite decades of anti-bias training, the LGBTQ+ community still faces discriminatory treatment from police. Black LGBTQ people are particularly at risk\u2014they are three times more likely to experience excessive force by police than non-Black LGBTQ people, as reported by National Coalition of Antiviolence Programs in 2017.<\/p>\n

LGBTQ individuals and activists have long debated whether police officers, especially those in uniform, belong at pride marches. In 2020, San Diego Pride announced that police officers would no longer have a contingent in the parade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a police contingent marching with us \u2014 not surveilling us, not intimidating us but marching with us \u2014 and I think it\u2019s great,\u201d Faderman said.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the country\u2019s current protests against violence at the hands of police, Selnick said he sees similarities between the fight for African American rights and the fight for LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a lot of parallels, but the people in each community don\u2019t see how much they\u2019re connected to each other, and it\u2019s almost like they\u2019re competing silos for equality, and there hasn\u2019t been a truly unified response and message,\u201d Selnick said.<\/p>\n

\"Remembering
One of the first San Diego Pride parades<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the Black Trans Lives Matter movement has gained traction, both communities are coming together to support people with this combined identity. More people are fighting for Black trans people after decades of Black trans people, including Marsha P. Johnson at Stonewall Inn, fighting for civil rights.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Makena Huey was the intern for San Diego Uptown News in summer 2020. You can follow her current writing at www.makenahuey.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Makena Huey From the initial riot that inspired June\u2019s Pride month parades to the protests supporting Black Lives Matter, both had the same goal: ending the police brutality of a marginalized community. Current Black activists are echoing the demands of the original Black activists who advanced the LGBTQ rights movements just over 50 years […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":965,"featured_media":242333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Remembering the History of Pride Parades","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/965"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}