Given the specific location of queer communities within many North American cities, this queer professional class has often been a leading advocate of gentrification and the coercive policing of the homeless. The emergence of queer capitalism makes it particularly important to understand the relations between class politics and queer liberation. The business and professional types who often speak for queer communities do not necessarily consider the interests of more vulnerable queers. The class-divided character of queer communities is also a reminder about strategies for organizing and building alliances. A strong labor movement can help drive queer rights forward.
Canadian queers have a proportionately weaker movement, yet substantially more rights.
In 1985, library workers in the Canadian Union of Public Employees were the first to win full benefits for same sex partners and their dependents. In each of these cases, queer unionists had to organize and fight to convince their sisters and brothers that queer rights was a union matter. Once one set of workers have won these rights, it is possible to spread them across the unionized population. Socialism and Queer Liberation Real queer liberation is a crucial wedge in the struggle to smash the system of sex and gender repression that impoverishes all of our sexual and emotional lives. Capitalism sucks out our life energy into the effort to keep ourselves alive, either through work, on inadequate benefits or in the streets.