I dug a stray piece of chunky glitter out of the corner of my eye, squeezed it shut, and opened. For a moment, there were only streaks of color: black, pink, gold. I was standing in the midst of thousands of people dressed in the colors suggested by the organizers of the first ever Queer Liberation March. It was June 30 in New York City, exactly 50 years after the Stonewall Riots. 

One avenue over, New York City was hosting “World Pride”— every two years, World Pride is held in a new city, kind of like the Olympics. In Manhattan, the biggest parade of rainbows yet drew out millions of people. My friends and I had devised a best-of-both-worlds plan: we’d spend the morning spent marching in protest at the QLM, then meet other friends that afternoon at the mainstream Pride parade to celebrate and collect free condoms and Capital One Bank rainbow phone wallets. 

Once we arrived at the March that morning, however, I didn’t want to leave. People in outfits that could only be described as protest art filled the streets: jean jackets embroidered with the names of transgender women of color murdered that year alone,  meticulously painted “ACAB” makeup paired with elaborate drag outfits, spray painted “gays against guns” tee shirts. My friends and I took a spot in the lineup next to a group with a banner reading “No Pride for some of us without Liberation for all of us.” We chanted, sang, and marched. I recognized signs with vintage slogans from the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade in 1970.

The marchers hadn’t registered for the event; no cumbersome check-ins or barricades had been set up. Forty thousand people simply organized and congregated at the famous Stonewall Inn and walked all the way uptown on Sixth Avenue. This was intentional: we followed the original route of the 1970 march and travelled in the opposite direction of the 2019 Pride Parade (The Parade, Pride™, of course, travels downtown on Fifth Ave, best known for its expensive shopping). At intersections, volunteers in official shirts linked arms to prevent traffic from colliding with demonstrators in a show of support and solidarity. The activist collective that organized the event, Reclaim Pride Coalition, has a website which explains: “We March in our communities’ tradition of resistance against police, state, and societal oppression, a tradition that is epitomized and symbolized by the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.” They did not seek official recognition by the City or the false “protection” of police presence. They chose instead to return to the classic call to action: “Out of the sidewalks, into the streets.” 

We reluctantly left the March and arrived at World Pride. When we got there, barricades kept us from joining the parade and forced spectators to congregate on the sidewalks in huge crowds. NYPD officers not only guarded the barricades, directing us through circuitous routes to simply cross the street, but were marching themselves. Cop cars with details repainted in rainbow drove along behind a corporate float that threw freebies (flags, whistles, basically any rainbow-covered object) onto the sidewalks. This was unsettling, especially given that the Stonewall Riots, supposedly honored that year by the theme “World Pride: Stonewall 50,” were riots directed against police raids. Homophobic, transphobic, and racist officers of the NYPD had been the cause of the original revolution; now they were in it. The Riots were about liberation from an actively violent State and system.  The Queer Liberation March foregrounds Liberation. The Pride Parade is now generic, largely apolitical, and commodified.

Attending Pride after the QLM felt different from previous years; it felt empty. Beyond the sea of rainbows that, yes, was beautiful, there was nothing but a terrible irony. Almost every float in the parade belonged to a corporation. T-Mobile had a hot pink float, and one person in a rainbow “T” shirt ran to the barricade with a tiny flag emblazoned with the logo in the left corner. They smiled at me expectantly, and I accepted it. I wanted it to feel like taking a gift from a friend, to go home and place it on my corkboard as a memento, but it only felt like a symbol of complacency. I was being bought. I stared at the floats of unreasonably happy people, celebrating a sanitized idea of progress that I couldn’t help but see as false and incomplete. Pride™ seemed content to ignore the unresolved issues my community faces. The Queer Liberation March confronted them head on, in both celebration and anger. That was something to be proud of.