welcome to gay usa i'm andy hom and happy independence day we're taping this the day before and we're with a group of people who declared independence from the heritage of pride parade and formed through reclaim pride coalition  the queer liberation march this year and we're here to talk about it when we have with us backs pit who is a their all reclaim pride organizers backspin is a non binary visual artist who designs lights and projections for plays and takes photos and makes videos and does graphic designs and we have here robert baez who was a ph d candidate in the department of sociology at the university of florida where he researches and teaches on sexualities intersectionality and social movements friend cheska bars john is an organizer for the reclaim pride coalition who cares about the liberation of all people and believes the most marginalized groups of people need to be heard from and ford for ford for you're also a writer and a mentor to high school students and a certified public accountant i'll keep that in mind and finally a face that should be familiar to viewers of this show  reginald thomas brown who has a masters in education who was a board member of vocal new york now you know you send me your bio id we didn't talk about this stuff the last time we were together you were president of the gay liberation front  years this august you've been on the a possible advisory board the national minority aids council building leaders of color program and as i said on the board well st of all i just want to say congratulations to everybody on this on this wonderful and then it just boom all these people showed up then there were blocks and blocks of people in the village and many more in the park many more as we move so wow the feelings about that was my impression i was  my volunteers are here they're all doing the things are very efficiently is anybody going to come in then a few minutes later there were people all over the place and i was having my volunteers direct to direct and go around to the back because they couldn't get in a grocery cause there's so many people that  know what others have said obviously you hope and you expect hope for the best i certainly wasn't expecting this and in like the weeks and months leading up to it in conversations on social media and just having conversations with people in my life everyone was saying the same thing which was thank you for doing this we're so excited i can't wait but we are obviously worried if the follow through is going to be there so it's a really incredible experience and i know personally i was sort of as others have said like down doing things the morning of so i didn't really have a sense until i don't know maybe we were up at like rd street or so three and i was able to get on top of something and get a little h and yeah and suddenly like you see this crowd that just stretches like as far as your eye can see and it was really breathtaking i mean we should explain briefly pride's been going on for several years and part of it is you know trump came in and we didn't want the parade to not acknowledge the we need to a lot of politics and civil rights and or and i thing and for the st year after the trial they put a resistance group in the front and then they wouldn't do that and they stuck it in the middle of the back or whatever so that's that's was that was why i was there i mean twenty five years ago for twenty five heritage pride sort of stepped aside and said you know how about how about a more political march march past the united nations that was at least some more flavor to it and there was an alternative marks that you're as well can like jump in when if missing information there but essentially the a lot of the demands that really improved was asking for were things like not having corporations a part of the parade not having cops marsh's well know right not having response because at one point you had to wear wristband in order to participate in the parade which is totally counter to you know people's political march as we have been saying for the last few months barricades rai so barricades was another way that kept the parade separate from the people and so all of those things we were very countered and so we tried to and successfully did that with th good point was that i was at the end of the march because i was you know making sure all the volunteers had what they needed and there was one banner that was left the aids for aids is not over banner and so three of us were carrying it and i saw six other people that were walking along with us and i said would you like to carry this banner and they were just so excited to come in and some of them this was their st march and the fact that they were actually able to participate in this and get a feeling for what what a pride was and i said to them it was people your age who did it who were tired and decided to fight back so you're actually carrying on a legacy here and like the look on their faces and they carried the banner all the way to central park but they were they came in off the street that was zero points they came in off the street and i wonder if anyone else had the same experience of i saw so many people who were on the sidewalks cheering on and then people in the crowd would say come join us get off the sidewalks get into the streets yes and i saw dozens of people do exactly that and suddenly like and it is permission like they were taking pictures on their phone and they're standing on the sidewalk kind of like you know come join us and they they were excited and they came and it was a really nice moment as it was like you don't just have to be expected or a spectator you can be a part of this movement and you can show up for this movement that's what i was is a veteran activist who decided to participate this year and i've seen her hop things which this year she decided to join the queer liberation march can we one run juanita please i met somebody who was the name of the song all right and he was just expressing his like gratitude and his excitement that all of this is happening and he also heard his opinion the christmas tree liberation day and so he was just like going back and remembering those moments as well and so i think just the intergenerational activity that was happening at the march was definitely something special because people who were a part of the movement so many decades ago were also collaborating with us younger folks and i think that's a really exciting energy to have many of whom had stopped marching and i saw a whole group from the gap of us alliance including our associate producer bill bowman who's inside but you know they were and they marched almost amazing but i marched and i was like oh you're all you're doing this and the nd year was like i don't see i don't see the value and at the same way that i did my st year so i can imagine after decades of seeing what it's become if you're an older person being like this isn't what we started this march for and now it's kind of just like a big old party for these kids like people nowadays so i am very grateful that they felt like our march was something that meant something and had value and that they walked i'm really proud of that right we also we have a clip of kelsey louis you know he's the head of the gay men's health crisis and it was difficult getting some of these mainstream groups to endorse in the beginning but kelsey gave this little brief comment about why he decided liberation day committee when i was a kid you know this was the group volunteers the play of the barge and we kept it purely political with all that stuff but i didn't know that it then we kind of said my god there's so much to do do i want to spend all you're just working on want to vent so how did you  did this you know get you so involved for here totally so i actually found my way into this work through a different organization here in the city called the metropolitan anarchist coordinating council and it was i met gabriel has another organizer one of those meetings and sort of heard about this and had seen it on facebook and i came i think the st meeting i came to actually was a big town hall that happened back in march maybe i'm not like and that there are actually people of a pretty wide cross section of genders and races and classes and all of these things and it was clear from that st meeting you know there are there are problems and there are like the st meeting was far from perfect and i think none of our meetings have been perfect and there was tension i think i'm kind of sort of like sparks in the air and i i felt really drive drawn in in a sense of oh this is a space where i like things are happening and there's not just like a singular dominant voice but there's actually potential for conversation and dialogue and for people to change their minds basically in this room and yeah i agree with that i actually found  coalition because i tend something called by requests which is a group run by paul the sarah and he told me about what he was doing for the th anniversary of pride and he was saying it's really important that we were represented and that we take part in this march and so i went to the meeting and i was like this is what i want to do and i met history and i love that this is the th anniversary and just making this the most inclusive environment possible for people is what i wanted to do for my th anniversary and that's what i will always remember and appreciate about this year i'm on the mailing list for writers who resist when i can go to their activities and i said there was a thing happening on wednesdays and it took me a while to get there i've seen my st reading was in april because at the time i was living in brooklyn and just you know getting back and forth just wasn't very could really but i moved to manhattan in january after having given the lottery a parade there and so since then i've been working closely with them and then as soon as i heard that this was going on in d c or in new york i knew that i wanted to be involved in some capacity and so  i came here and got involved earlier this year have tried and succeeded in getting there just so proud involved and here at some capacity but i would love to see that continuing on in the lives matter movement that's clearly shown and to this very day it might not be people in marching in the streets in black lives matter of marches every day but we still see the videos and we know how police treat people of color  assaulting them like a week and we know how they treat sex workers we know how all of these things happen so to include police officers regardless of their sexuality in our march and ignore the very real was left in solitary confinement despite the stop there knowing that she had a medical condition while in solitary confinement she died and francesco is saying like the  police arrested her the police put her there the police here are responsible to me for her it is not and she could be here with us marching with us were not for the police so feel so viscerally wrong to me to say to welcome police about ensuring that the main message which is about liberation which is about fighting gets injustice and racism every single day that that doesn't get lost in something bigger and that can happen sometimes in the main parade so today is club because i don't want to mess it up and northrup one of the main organizers who was my usual co host on the show i don't know how long it takes you home and i caught up with the end of maybe two hours into it and here is what ann had to say about her feelings about at what that is i mean it's companies saying that they support i'll be fifty people and then donating millions of dollars to politicians that don't support our rights or it's just acting in ways that hurt our community and it's also i think where the reason why that sign got so much attention and so many legs is because capital never sustainable i think what one percent of the people in this country own and more than fifty percent of the by a member of the united federation of teachers because i'd heard it and i wasn't sure if it was true they were they wanted to they wanted to bring a bunch of high school students into the main parade and they were told the fee would be fifty thousand dollars  they don't rate you on the campaign contributions the men that are destroying the gate glorious at google actually wrote a petition to the san francisco pride asking that they not that google not be allowed to march in the san francisco pride because five percent and i think that's just a really great example as to how these corporations and companies are just trying to sell things to the community and to you know perform this like diversity rhetoric but then when it comes down to like the issues like employing people within the community giving us joe's jobs and decision making abilities within those corporations that they are not there for that either and so i think that was also really important to this they said you know i work down at this like i think there's like a restaurant or something down in chelsea that has many rainbow fires around it but they're like i'm working on saturday i've asked you know i've asked my employer if i can get off but they said i can't tell like six p this on the day i mean i certainly hope so and i think there's a lot of energy within the coalition as well that wants it to continue and become something more and we have gotten so many messages from around the world saying thank you for  if they do thanks a lot so what i just wanted to say was we hope that we could do this again in new york city but it was funny before we did this there were people reaching out to us in other cities asking if this would also happen in other cities and our position was you can start your own like of course you can use our six like our graphics like backs made amazing graphics for our march the year of the sun so like we want this to spread and we want this to grow so where open to the conversation were open and people volunteering and doing their own thing  ok you know why not i think this weekend in london actually there's like pride events happening and we're receiving messages earlier today from people who are organizing an alternative march who were here in new york saw what happened  inside this has to happen in london as well mazing you know and and i think it's really great that people are looking to us and are excited and energized by what we did here in new york city but i also think it's really important to remind people that they can do this in their own city too they don't rangers it's a matter of turning to your community and seeing where people are out or you're not and i'm sure that people are already doing amazing work in the community and it's just about coming together about what's being done and producing something that is so it can be done i mean you don't need all these you to do with the money of the things what do you do with it but i don't know where the do this now but the real question is what did this march do for us and you in terms of that is dependent on you no one is forcing you to read a book no one is making you read articles no one is telling you to fact check things and i think there's a lot of this information out there and to have people who come from different backgrounds and are experts in what they're talking about to talk about sex work to talk about the fact that if you're a feminist and you think you're helping women but you're not actually helping the woman that can afford to eat that are discriminated in about thirty states for jobs and so that they need to go out there and do sex work if you're not considering those women what is your feminism you know it's not enough and i think that's a very important discussion that a lot of i think maybe liberal women or liberal m might not want to have but we had that discussion and we had people talking about a bunch of different issues and so i think that was a very important part of the day and someone else that people pick up at the rally in terms of messages that inspired you well just before that i think for thirty five dollars and people are in fact that around the world is it is it who are not getting treatments right and a lot of that has to do with again from a big pharma brain charging through my medications cost more than a one thousand working now so it has not failed it is not failure but you know we're all part of a mass movement here i mean which is what it was certainly many ways and you know you look around the world at now we're in a terrible political situation in this country i think we can agree you know other countries you see like hong kong everybody getting out in the street and staying there and you know mass mass numbers this happened in south career a couple of a couple years ago to get rid of a president through etc we had the big women's matter health care housing security or income like food security all of these issues and it's about us going out there and making a difference and working to elect and then we don't know someone else success of the reclaim pride more generally is its intersection all and its coalitional so we have people from all different experiences coming together we certainly have difficult conversations within the meetings but i think that's part of the pictures and there was no sense of community it all felt very in line with sort of the rainbow capitalism that's happening in the rest of the city and so it was kind of a very like deflating experience to have with these friends to  be in that space again to actually be turned bricks and taken to the streets but then i think for me at least x participating in in the march on sunday was sort of like the opposite end of the emotional  that having been around fifty years ago and this is just another chapter in my story that i've lived long enough to actually see all of you oh you know my legacy i mean what i think about focused on marriage equality which it's totally sure people should be able to get married if they want to but that's certainly not the goal there are still so many people within the community particularly black brown folks where the center of this movement is trying to get to we're trying to really put those voices at the forefront to make that difference to be able to give them comfortable living situations on the fair to people who have not had that experience and i think like relying so much on the positive it is in some ways sort of like using what people refer to as like spiritual by saying void of dressing like the material concern is in these people to reiterate what other people have like in my life at least i see people on instagram every single day asking primarily where trans people are asking for money to pay their rent and to get medication that they need to stay alive  yeah that's a dark slim point i've been asked a few times now like ok so what can i do get involved or how can we support people all year round outside of pride month and i think of the best way to do that is to give your money to people who need it directly industrial complex i think the best way to do that all your goal is to just give it directly to people who need it because people know what they need we think about the and i think sometimes people can feel uncomfortable with giving money away but i grew up going to church they're giving money away sunday why don't you help someone in need who is telling you exactly what they need right right in front of you exactly and i think that's another way you can really affect change in our community and i think if we're going to be an anti capitalist movement yes we have to like have this rhetoric and take on these corporations and take on you know the one percent who has all this wealth but it's also about shifting our understanding of risk in so many itself then you need to be not just hoarding money on the off chance that something bad happens to you need to be giving it to other people who need it today absolutely so you showed but there's a lot of great work that can be done outside of politics almost everybody most all the people seem to d different ways and i think part of it is so it's certainly a very big undertaking to think that we this table are able to overthrow the capitalist and it's kind of scary read daunting  actually challenge their demand one they're showing that people want change and i think if there is a candidate or a person or policies that align with that then that's where i want to be and that's what i want to move this country for that i want us to i really love it just said that we created this world yes on sunday and i think we have the potential to do that all the time because the world we live in is we being created exactly system that we're living it was created by somebody so we can we as we as somebody who can create a world then you want and to me it's about sort of not trying to reform these violent institutions like the police like the carswell state right or rather to destitute them and to say you are not needed  coming before the supreme court they announce this week it's going to be heard on october the th what short list has either through one of them is a transgender case one of them two of them are gay cases and they're going to decide whether these transgender and  others the other news this week was full of you know the show with prosecutors and those who got two minutes and twenty seven seconds the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation announced what a constitutional amendment protecting sexual orientation and gender identity they don't seem to have consulted anybody else i don't imagine amazing experience and i just want to say to other people who feel like they're not seen or they're not heard you can make yourself heard you can make yourself seen if you want something like this make it happen and we are all willing to talk about way back and for me i'm really excited that we finished this sort of st big project of ours and i'm really excited to see where we go from here and i feel like the possibilities are endless and i look forward to that i will go out with commercial in him that's the good thing about the i mean the commercialism means that we've been accepted mainstream which is going to happen but i think it's also important we go back to the roots of stone which is protested fighting for the rights we still don't know