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'Pinkwashing': Just Stop Oil Blocks London Pride Parade in Sponsorship Protest
'These partnerships embarrass the LGBTQ+ community at a time when much of the cultural world is rejecting ties to these toxic industries'
Jul 01, 2023
Just Stop Oil protesters temporarily blocked London’s Pride Parade Saturday afternoon to protest the event accepting sponsorship money from “high-polluting industries.”
Pride faced accusations of “pinkwashing” over its decision to make United Airlines the headline sponsor of this year’s event.
Seven protesters were arrested at 1:30 pm after blocking the road in front of a Coca-Cola truck. Coca-Cola is seen as the world's biggest plastic polluter.
LGBTQ+ members of Just Stop Oil called on organizers to condemn new oil, gas, and coal licenses and stop allowing the inclusion of floats from these corporations in the parade.
James Skeet, a Just Stop Oil spokesperson, said in a statement:
“Pride was born from protest. It speaks to how far we’ve come as a community, that high-polluting industries and the banks that fund them, now see Pride as a useful vehicle for sanitizing their reputations, waving rainbow flags in one hand whilst accelerating social collapse with the other. It is queer people, and particularly queer people of color in the global south, who are suffering first in this accelerating social breakdown. What would those who instigated the gay liberation movement during the Stonewall riots in 1969, make of the corporatized spectacle Pride has now become?"
“These partnerships embarrass the LGBTQ+ community, at a time when much of the cultural world is rejecting ties to these toxic industries. We call on Pride to remember the spirit in which it was founded and to respect the memory of all those who fought and died to secure the rights we now possess whilst taking the necessary steps to protect our community long into the future.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan speaking before the parade said:
“I agree with protesting in a way that is lawful, safe, and peaceful. I think that Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are really important pressure groups trying to put power on those who have power and influence."
“I fully support the right to protest. It’s really important to recognize the joy of democracy is protest."
“I am somebody who feels quite passionately that we have to tackle the climate emergency. And I feel quite passionately about encouraging people to join the movement to tackle the climate emergency. In my view, protest should be peaceful, lawful, and safe.”
Peter Tatchell, the legendary LGBTQ+ rights campaigner, and prominent member of the Gay Liberation Front and the civil resistance group OutRage! Said:
“I helped organize the first Pride in the UK in 1972 and have attended every Pride London march since then. Pride was always meant to be both a celebration and a protest. From the outset, we stood in solidarity with other struggles for freedom and social justice, against corporate pinkwashing and all forms of exploitation. We saw queer liberation as just one aspect of a wider liberation movement.”
“Climate destruction is destroying communities, jobs, homes and lives across the world, especially in poorer countries. Fossil fuels are endangering the survival of humanity – including LGBTQ+ people. Our community must not collude with environment, species and climate destroying companies.”
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How to Ensure Next Month's Pride Is More Than a PR Stunt
Pride should be a time to focus on pushing forth progress for all LGBTQ+ individuals, including our LGBTQ+ community incarcerated in our nation’s carceral system.
May 13, 2023
It’s official—we’re less than a month away from the beginning of Pride. And the anticipation is building. Disney recently announced its first ever Pride event, “Disneyland After Dark: Pride Nite.” Meanwhile, cities around the country have been announcing their Pride themes. San Francisco will focus on “Looking Back and Moving Forward.” D.C. Capital Pride’s theme will be “Peace, Love, Revolution;” and New York City’s is “Strength in Solidarity.”
But if we really want to show solidarity across our community, we must remember how many within our community aren’t truly free.
Pride represents a time to celebrate and honor the progress that has been made for LGBTQ+ rights, especially during a time where anti- LGBTQ+ laws are being introduced nearly daily. But it’s also a time to reflect on how many within our community are exposed to violence and trauma because of their identities. That’s why I believe while we celebrate the progress made for LGBTQ+ rights, Pride should also be a time to focus on pushing forth progress for all LGBTQ+ individuals, including our LGBTQ+ community incarcerated in our nation’s carceral system.
Today, lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are incarcerated at a rate three times greater than that of their heterosexual counterparts.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of mass incarceration in the U.S., a system of policies and practices that increased the prison population and have continued to disproportionately targeted LGBTQ+ people. Today, lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are incarcerated at a rate three times greater than that of their heterosexual counterparts. Approximately one in six transgender individuals have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. Overrepresentation of LGBTQ+ within our criminal justice system is no accident, but rather a reflection of a system that polices and criminalizes queer and trans lives—particularly queer and trans people of color.
Incarceration isn’t easy for anyone, and LGBTQ+ folks have an unusually harsh experience while incarcerated in an already cruel environment. In California, nearly 60% of trans individuals incarcerated have been sexually assaulted during their incarcerations, which is well higher than the average incarcerated population reports. Lesbian and bisexual women are almost five times more likely than heterosexual women to have a sentence length of over 20 years. Nationwide, over 70% of gay and bisexual men incarcerated have experienced solitary confinement, which is nearly twice the odds for heterosexual incarcerated men.
Pride, despite its intentions, has not always been aligned with the needs of those most marginalized within the LGBTQ+ community. Rather, the increased commercialism of Pride has resulted in corporations like Walmart actively marketing the month for profits while doing little to support the most urgent social problems faced by the community throughout the year, such as mass incarceration. This year, amidst unparalleled attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and transphobia, Pride should reflect its origins of community organizing for our most vulnerable members and achieving structural change.
To be sure, Pride is an important time of celebration and rejoicing over the progress we’ve made, and some may feel that a focus on those within a violent system of incarceration detracts from that moment of celebration. But I argue we can both celebrate the accomplishments that have been achieved over the last decade, from the passage of same-sex marriage to unprecedented representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in state and federal administrations, while demanding more. Pride should never become a time solely for anger or mourning, but we cannot rightfully celebrate these accomplishments that benefit us without pushing for additional ones for others in our community.
More so, what we yearn for as a community are systematic societal changes to protect and promote our well-being, including that of our most marginalized. While reforms to improve prisons and jails as well as the reentry process for LGBTQ+ incarcerated individuals are needed, we must also prevent LGBTQ+ people from being incarcerated in the first place. Abolishing HIV criminalization laws would be one place to start—an archaic notion of HIV risk transmission that allows 35 states to funnel their homophobia and transphobia. Anti-profiling laws from police that include protections for LGBTQ+ could be a start to reduce the overrepresentation of queer and trans people inside. Policies that prevent poverty and homelessness—which disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ people—could reduce scenarios that lead to incarceration in the first place.
The urgency of mass incarceration and its lasting harm on the LGBTQ+ community cannot be emphasized enough. We must not allow for another 50 years of mass incarceration as an ineffective solution to the ills of society, including poverty and inadequate health access. This Pride, we—as the queer and trans community—should live up to slogans praising solidarity, strength, or revolution by advocating and fighting for our incarcerated siblings.
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Anti-'Pinkwashing' Campaign Sets Sight on Komen Partnership With Fossil Fuel-Backer Bank of America
Group says prominent foundation must end its partnership with the Wall Street giant, "a primary funder of the fossil fuel industry—an industry that’s fueling the climate and breast cancer crises!"
Oct 01, 2021
As corporations nationwide "go pink" in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month beginning Friday, an advocacy group has launched a campaign targeting one of the best known names related to the fight against the disease--Susan G. Komen--over the organization's partnership with Bank of America, which "funds the cancer-causing fossil fuel industry."
The campaign is part of Breast Cancer Action's ongoing efforts to push back against what it's coined "pinkwashing"--when a company promotes a product emblazoned with pink ribbons signifying the battle against breast cancer but simultaneously markets or produces a product linked to the disease.
"At Breast Cancer Action," said the group's executive director, Dr. Krystal Redman, "we demand accountability and transparency, and we expect our allies in the breast cancer field to follow through on their promises to address and end breast cancer. We call out those who use the pink ribbon with no intention other than virtue signaling, or worse yet lining their own pockets."
Komen has been at the center of previous "Think before you pink" annual campaigns by BCAction, including its 2010 "What the cluck" effort targeting Komen's partnership with KFC.
At issue this year is the Pink Ribbon Banking program. When a Bank of America customer uses a Pink Ribbon credit card, "Komen receives at least $3 plus 0.08% of all purchases (less returns)," the foundation states on its website. Those funds are part of the $1.5 million the bank pledged to Komen from the start of this year until the end of 2023. The bank also offers a Pink Ribbon debit card.
According to BCAction, the cards "are a blatant example of pinkwashing." The campaign explains what it frames as the heart of the problem:
Bank of America is a top financial contributor to the fossil fuel industry, an industry that increases our risk for breast cancer through environmental exposures produced all along the fossil fuel continuum. We are exposed to chemicals such as benzene, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, and PFAS from extraction to processing, to exposure to fossil fuel products and byproducts.
Susan G. Komen is pinkwashing by accepting money from a Pink Ribbon Banking Program that also grows the profits of Bank of America, which funds the cancer-causing fossil fuel industry. Susan G. Komen cannot claim to care about ending breast cancer while pocketing MILLIONS from an industry that causes the disease.
As one example, the campaign notes Bank of America's financial backing of the controversial Line 3 tar sands pipeline--support which has already led to accusations of the bank "greenwashing" by climate campaigners.
Also referenced by the campaign is a recent analysis led by Rainforest Action Network naming Bank of America as among the four worst banks in terms of financing fossil fuels globally from 2016 to 2020.
"The financial industry's continued support of fossil fuel projects," Breast Cancer Action program manager Jayla Burton said in a statement, "proliferates a legacy of climate destruction, environmental racism, and public health negligence."
Komen's partnership with the bank must come to an end, the campaign aruges, if Komen is to stop running afoul of its own stated goal.
"Susan G. Komen claims to be 'where the end of breast cancer begins.' If this is true," organizers wrote, the foundation "must stop banking on breast cancer and divest from pinkwashing! Phase out the Pink Ribbon Banking Program with Bank of America, a primary funder of the fossil fuel industry--an industry that's fueling the climate and breast cancer crises!"
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Rejecting 'Rainbow Capitalism' of Pride Parade, Thousands March for Queer Liberation in NYC
"We dont want your rainbow merchandise, we want equal human rights."
Jul 01, 2019
Embracing queer pride while also rejecting corporate involvement and police violence, tens of thousands of people marched in New York City on Sunday as part of the Queer Liberation March.
The march was an alternative to and rebuke of the NYC Pride March, though both marches, as well as other World Pride events across the globe, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the uprising at the Stonewall Inn.
The Queer Liberation March's path flowed in the opposite direction of the corporate-captured march, and followed the same route as the original Christopher Street Liberation Day March of 1970, which took place on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
Among the alternate march's backers was currently imprisoned U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who shared a message with particpants.
"Today, I hope you will look around you and see this world," she said in a message read at the rally. "It is not a utopia in the far-away future. It is here. It is our community. It is us. We got this."
The Reclaim Pride Coalition organized the Queer Liberation March, which said that 45,000 people took part. The coalition described the event as "a people's political march--no corporate floats, and no police in our march," and explained that it seeks to recleaim "the NYC Pride March so it better represents the TBLGQIATSNBGNC+allies."
The coalition summed up the differences between its march and mainstream one on social media:
Marchers highlighted those points with signs with displaying messages like "Queer Liberation not rainbow capitalism" and "End the murder of black and latinx trans women."
"The current Pride Parade is shameful--a corporate extravaganza that completely ignores the profound fights we're still waging all over the world," said Larry Kramer, author and LGBTQIATS+ rights activist, in a press statement earlier this year. "We must send a powerful message to the homophobic, racist Trump administration and regimes and corporations everywhere that are killing our brothers and sisters."
Sunday's march featured two moments of silence. One honored those whose lives were "lost to homophobia, transphobia, racism and sexism, to HIV/AIDS, and to violence in all its forms." The second paid "special tribute to the trans women of color murdered throughout the country merely for proudly being truly themselves," as well as "those killed by police or while incarcerated, those who have died by gun violence or by lack of access to housing and medical care."
Images such as these from participants captured the event as it happened:
"I've seen first-hand the violence the vast militarized police state has done to our queer and trans communities," Manning said in an earlier statement. "Our history is one of rebellion and solidarity. We must stand united and refuse to march with police, corporations, and the systemic violence they continue to inflict on immigrants, people of color, and marginalized folks across the queer and trans spectrum."
As activist Evan Greer said recently, "the struggle is not over," and neither corporations nor politicians nor law enforcement are "going to protect us."
In a video op-ed published last month at the Washington Post, she asked, "Do we simply want to be included in a fundamentally broken and unjust system?"
"Or," she said, "do we want to return to the roots of what people were fighting for at Stonewall and work to dismantle that system and replace it with one that takes care of everyone?"
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Why We Fight About Pride Parades
Can the queer community support members who suffer state violence or corporate exploitation? That's what the pride debates come down to.
Jun 18, 2018
Pride marks a time when tens of thousands of people hit the streets in fabulous attire to dance, celebrate, and memorialize the spirit of love and resistance.
Lost in the partying, though, is the darker side of Pride. In the Capital Pride parade in DC, for example, visitors were joined by floats from weapons manufacturer Northrop Grumman, the Metropolitan Police Department, and Wells Fargo. More generally, corporate sponsorship is ubiquitous throughout Pride events.
Given that Pride began with the radical anti-police riots of the Stonewall Uprising, it's not surprising that many find the current "rainbow capitalist," police-celebrating version of Capital Pride and others like it around the country kind of gross.
We need much more than a parade to make sure that trans women of color, LGBTQ2S homeless youth, Palestinian queerfolk, and so many others are able to celebrate too, instead of fighting for their lives with little to no help from the mainstream queer community.
As a result, in recent years, the local group No Justice No Pride has protested Capital Pride for ignoring "the concerns of queer, trans, Black, Latinx, and Two-Spirit communities in D.C. regarding its complicity with entities that harm LGBTQ2S people." (Two-Spirit communities refer to gender-nonconforming traditions inside some Native cultures.)
Similar conflicts between more radical queer activists and those who hold power within the LGBTQ2S community have occurred across the country. In Columbus, Ohio last year, four protesters against police violence were arrested and tried for disrupting the Pride parade -- and the local Pride organization testified against them in court.
This broader debate asks what the LGBTQ2S community is really about. It poses questions about the meaning of including problematic companies and regressive forces in our parade. What does it say to those queer folks who are the targets of Northrup Grumman's fighter jets in Yemen, of police brutality in DC or Columbus, or of Wells Fargo's investments in the Dakota Access Pipeline -- much less to our straight allies in those communities?
The message appears to be that when relatively well off (read: largely affluent, white, cis, gay, and male) sections of the American LGBTQ2S community have obtained a certain level of comfort and rights, they believe they can safely write off their responsibility and need to serve as allies to those who are still struggling to survive.
So what's to be done? Certainly, sustained effort to fix the parades is critical.
But in the streets near DuPont Circle, Washington DC's local "gayborhood," you can find stickers posted by radical LGBTQ2S people that say "Parades are not enough." Embodying a historical slogan, they encapsulate a spirit of having a broader politics that extends beyond Pride parades as the center of LGBTQ2S people's politics.
While the contents of the Pride parade are important, the parade itself is a forum, a contested symbol for a wider array of issues. We need much more than a parade to make sure that trans women of color, LGBTQ2S homeless youth, Palestinian queerfolk, and so many others are able to celebrate too, instead of fighting for their lives with little to no help from the mainstream queer community.
The vision of a liberated LGBTQ2S existence, then, is one that must be embodied every day in a politics of solidarity, and not just once a year in a public display.
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Bradley Manning is Off Limits at SF Gay Pride Parade, but Corporate Sleaze is Embraced
A seemingly trivial controversy reveals quite a bit about pervasive political values
Apr 27, 2013
News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning, widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued, the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quickly capitulated, issuing a cowardly, imperious statement that has to be read to be believed.
Williams proclaimed that "Manning will not be a grand marshal in this year's San Francisco Pride celebration" and termed his selection "a mistake". She blamed it all on a "staff person" who prematurely made the announcement based on a preliminary vote, and she assures us all that the culprit "has been disciplined": disciplined. She then accuses Manning of "actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform": a substance-free falsehood originally spread by top US military officials which has since been decisively and extensively debunked, even by some government officials (indeed, it's the US government itself, not Manning, that is guilty of "actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform"). And then, in my favorite part of her statement, Williams decreed to all organization members that "even the hint of support" for Manning's action - even the hint - "will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride". Will not be tolerated.
I originally had no intention of writing about this episode, but the more I discovered about it, the more revealing it became. So let's just consider a few of the points raised by all of this.
First, while even a hint of support for Manning will not be tolerated, there is a long roster of large corporations serving as the event's sponsors who are welcomed with open arms. The list is here. It includes AT&T and Verizon, the telecom giants that enabled the illegal warrantless eavesdropping on US citizens by the Bush administration and its NSA, only to get retroactively immunized from Congress and thus shielded from all criminal and civil liability (including a lawsuit brought in San Francisco against those corporations by their customers who were illegally spied on). Last month, AT&T was fined by OSHA for failing to protect one of its employees who was attacked, was found by the FCC last year to have overcharged customers by secretly switching them to plans they didn't want, and is now being sued by the US government for "allegedly bill[ing] the government improperly for services designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing who place calls by typing messages over the web."
The list of SF Pride sponsors also includes Bank of America, now being sued for $1 billion by the US government for allegedly engaging in a systematic scheme of mortgage fraud which the US Attorney called "spectacularly brazen in scope". Just last month, the same SF Pride sponsor received a record fine for ignoring a court order and instead trying to collect mortgage payments from bankrupt homeowners to which it was not entitled. Earlier this month, SF-Pride-sponsoring Bank of America paid $2.4 billion to settle shareholder allegations that Bank executives "failed to disclose information about losses at Merrill Lynch and bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees before the brokerage was acquired by Bank of America in January 2009 for $18.5 billion."
Another beloved SF Pride sponsor, Wells Fargo, is also being "sued by the US for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages over claims the bank made reckless mortgage loans that caused losses for a federal insurance program when they defaulted". Last year, Wells Fargo was fined $3.1 million by a federal judge for engaging in conduct that court called "highly reprehensible" relating to its persecution of a struggling homeowner. In 2011, the bank was fined by the US government "for allegedly pushing borrowers with good credit into expensive mortgages and falsifying loan applications."
Also in Good Standing with the SF Pride board: Clear Channel, the media outlet owned by Bain Capital that broadcasts the radio programs of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck; a pension fund is suing this SF Pride sponsor for making cheap, below-market loans to its struggling parent company. The health care giant Kaiser Permanente, another proud SF Pride sponsor, is currently under investigation by California officials for alleged massive privacy violations in the form of recklessly disclosing 300,000 patient records.
So apparently, the very high-minded ethical standards of Lisa L Williams and the SF Pride Board apply only to young and powerless Army Privates who engage in an act of conscience against the US war machine, but instantly disappear for large corporations and banks that hand over cash. What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture. Even at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, once an iconic symbol of cultural dissent and disregard for stifling peities, nothing can happen that might offend AT&T and the Bank of America. The minute something even a bit deviant takes place (as defined by standards imposed by America's political and corporate class), even the SF Gay Pride Parade must scamper, capitulate, apologize, and take an oath of fealty to their orthodoxies (we adore the military, the state, and your laws). And, as usual, the largest corporate factions are completely exempt from the strictures and standards applied to the marginalized and powerless. Thus, while Bradley Manning is persona non grata at SF Pride, illegal eavesdropping telecoms, scheming banks, and hedge-fund purveryors of the nation's worst right-wing agitprop are more than welcome.
Second, the authoritarian, state-and-military-revering mentality pervading Williams' statement is striking. It isn't just the imperious decree that "even a hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", though that is certainly creepy. Nor is it the weird announcement that the wrongdoer "has been disciplined". Even worse is the mindless embrace of the baseless claims of US military officials (that Manning "placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform") along with the supremely authoritarian view that any actions barred by the state are, ipso facto, ignoble and wrong. Conduct can be illegal and yet still be noble and commendable: see, for instance, Daniel Ellsberg, or most of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the US. Indeed, acts of civil disobedience and conscience by people who risk their own interests to battle injustices are often the most commendable acts. Equating illegal behavior with ignominious behavior is the defining mentality of an authoritarian - and is particularly notable coming from what was once viewed as a bastion of liberal dissent.
But the more one learns about the parties involved here, the less surprising it becomes. According to her biography, Williams "organized satellite offices for the Obama campaign" and also works for various Democratic politicians. It was President Obama, of course, who so notoriously decreed Bradley Manning guilty in public before his trial by military officers serving under Obama even began, and whose administration was found by the UN's top torture investigator to have abused him and is now so harshly prosecuting him. It's anything but surprising that a person who was a loyal Obama campaign aide finds Bradley Manning anathema while adoring big corporations and banks (which funded the Obama campaign and who, in the case of telecoms, Obama voted to immunize).
What we see here is how even many of the most liberal precincts in America are now the leading spokespeople for and loyalists to state power as a result of their loyalty to President Obama. Thus do we have the President of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade sounding exactly like the Chairman of the Joints Chief, or Sarah Palin, or gay war-loving neocons, in depicting any meaningful opposition to the National Security State as the supreme sin. I'd be willing to bet large amounts of money that Williams has never condemned the Obama administration's abuse of Manning in detention or its dangerously radical prosecution of him for "aiding the enemy". I have no doubt that the people who did all of that would be showered with gratitude by Parade officials if they attended. In so many liberal precincts in the Age of Obama - even now including the SF Gay Pride parade - the federal government, its military, and its federal prosecutors are to be revered and celebrated but not criticized; only those who oppose them are villains.
Third, when I wrote several weeks ago about the remarkable shift in public opinion on gay equality, I noted that this development is less significant than it seems because the cause of gay equality poses no real threat to elite factions or to how political and economic power in the US are distributed. If anything, it bolsters those power structures because it completely and harmlessly assimilates a previously excluded group into existing institutions and thus incentivizes them to accommodate those institutions and adopt their mindset. This event illustrates exactly what I meant.
While some of the nation's most corrupt corporations are welcome to fly their flag over the parade, consider what Manning - for whom "even a hint of support will not be tolerated" - actually did. His leak revealed all sorts of corruption, deceit and illegality on the part of the world's most powerful corporations. They led to numerous journalism awards for WikiLeaks. Even Bill Keller, the former Executive Editor of the New York Times who is a harsh WikiLeaks critic, credited those leaks with helping to spark the Arab Spring, the greatest democratic revolution the world has seen in decades. Multiple media accounts describe how the cables documenting atrocities committed by US troops in Iraq prevented the Malaki government from allowing US troops to stay beyond the agreed-to deadline: i.e., helped end the Iraq war by thwarting Obama's attempts to prolong it. For all of that, Manning was selected by Guardian readers as the 2012 Person of the Year, while former Army Lt. Dan Choi said yesterday:
As we move forward as a country, we need truth in order to gain justice, you can't have justice without the whole truth . . . So what [Manning did as a gay American, as a gay soldier, he stood for integrity, I am proud of him."
But none of those vital benefits matter to authoritarians. That's because authoritarians, by definition, believe in the overarching Goodness of institutions of power, and believe the only bad acts come from those who challenge or subvert that power. Bad acts aren't committed by the National Security State or Surveillance State; they are only committed by those who oppose them. If a person's actions threaten power factions or are deemed prohibited by them, then Good Authoritarians will reflexively view the person as evil and will be eager to publicly disassociate themselves from such individuals. Or, as Williams put it, "even the hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", and those who deviate from this decree will be "disciplined".
Even the SF Gay Pride Parade is now owned by and beholden to the nation's largest corporations, subject to their dictates. Those who run the event are functionaries of, loyalists to, the nation's most powerful political officials. That's how this parade was so seamlessly transformed from orthodoxy-challenging, individualistic and creative cultural icon into yet another pile of obedient apparatchiks that spout banal slogans doled out by the state while viciously scorning those who challenge them. Yes, there will undoubtedly still be exotically-dressed drag queens, lesbian motorcycle clubs, and groups proudly defined by their unusual sexual proclivities participating in the parade, but they'll be marching under a Bank of America banner and behind flag-waving fans of the National Security State, the US President, and the political party that dominates American politics and its political and military institutions. Yet another edgy, interesting, creative, independent event has been degraded and neutered into a meek and subservient ritual that must pay homage to the nation's most powerful entities and at all costs avoid offending them in any way.
It's hardly surprising that someone who so boldly and courageously opposes the US war machine is demonized and scorned this way. Daniel Ellsberg was subjected to the same attacks before he was transformed many years later into a liberal hero (though Ellsberg had the good fortune to be persecuted by a Republican rather than Democratic President and thus, even back then, had some substantial support; come to think of it, Ellsberg lives in San Francisco: would expressions of support for him be tolerated?). But the fact that such lock-step, heel-clicking, military-mimicking behavior is now coming from the SF Gay Pride Parade of all places is indeed noteworthy: it reflects just how pervasive this authoritarian rot has become.
Corporate corruption and sleaze
For a bit more on the dominance of corporate sleaze and corruption in our political culture, see the first few paragraphs of this extraordinary Politico article on a new book about DC culture, and this Washington Post article detailing the supreme annual convergence of political, media and corporate sleaze called "the White House Correspondents' Dinner", to be held this weekend.
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