After last year's police brutality reckoning, not everyone agrees on uniformed officers marching.
Ah, June. The time of year when the heat rolls in and school lets out and seemingly every corporation puts a rainbow filter over their logos and tweets some iteration of "love is love." |
But despite the "Santacon but for queers" vibe that Pride parades have taken on recently, there are still good reasons to celebrate. |
Pride is an assertion of self, a taking up of public space historically unsafe for expressing queerness openly. Beyond that, the event itself can mean different things for different people. |
For some, it's simply a vibrant celebration of being able to be who you are in public. For others, it's an act of political solidarity: A wonderfully diverse community comes together to affirm itself as a collective movement toward equality for all. |
And for others, the event's origin as the commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising against a police raid, and the days of civil unrest that followed, makes Pride an annual protest against oppressive state violence. |
So who is Pride for? Whose experience and comfort should be prioritized? What do the marchers represent? |
These are some of the questions complicating this year's Pride, given last year's national reckoning over police brutality and the continuing movement for Black Lives. And last year in New York, the police cracked down on queer liberation marchers, on what would have been 2020 Pride Sunday. |
The decision drew both criticism and praise. Some, like The Times editorial board, condemned the temporary ban as counter to the modern inclusive spirit of Pride, a regressive enforcement of division in what should be an opportunity for collective unity. |
Those who praised the Pride organizers' decision said that the event's promise of a safe space to be yourself and occupy all of your intersectional identities is incompatible with the threat of violence that officers' uniforms signify to vulnerable populations. As Roxane Gay put it in a Times guest essay, the police "aren't actually being rejected; they are being asked to respect boundaries." |
It's a debate without easy answers, and we aimed to get to the heart of it on The Argument podcast. Jane Coaston, the host, brought the opposing sides of the story together to talk it out: André Thomas, who co-chairs NYC Pride, the organization that made the decision, and Brian Downey, the N.Y.P.D. detective who runs the Gay Officers Action League. |
It's The Argument's most intimate conversation to date, deeply personal and emotional but full of compassion. Both sides believe in the power and privilege of their respective organization's mission. Both want to do right by their predecessors and make the future safer and more inclusive. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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