I’ve been going to Pride marches for about forty plus years. Coast to coast, from New York to California. For most of those years I didn’t think of it as protesting. I thought of it as showing up and celebrating being queer. Being part of something. Connecting to my community.
It took me a while to understand that showing up was the protest.
This episode started as a conversation about the No Kings protest on March 28th. And it is about that. But it became something bigger as I wrote it. It became about the full arc of queer protest, from a handful of people standing outside Independence Hall in 1965, to Stonewall, to ACT UP, to the fight for marriage equality, to five million people in the streets last June. I wanted to talk about why those sixty years of fighting for our equality is tied to No Kings.
I wanted to trace that line because I think we forget how long we’ve been doing this. And I think some people, especially younger people who came of age after Obergefell, might not know the history at all. Annual Reminder Day. The Mattachine Society sip-in at Julius’ Bar. The State Liquor Authority ordering bars to refuse service to anyone they suspected of being gay. ACT UP shutting down Wall Street while the government pretended a plague wasn’t happening.
These are not abstract historical events. These are the direct connections of every right we have today. And the people who did those things, most of their names are gone. We don’t know them. But what they did, that survived.
The episode also connects our history to something happening right now. The No Kings movement isn’t a queer march. It’s a coalition. The Human Rights Campaign, the ACLU, the AFL-CIO, over 200 organizations standing together. When I was at the Palm Springs No Kings protest last year, I looked around and it wasn’t just our community. It was everyone. Families, workers, veterans, immigrants. That’s new. That’s what greater solidarity looks like.
And I talk about anger. Because I think a lot of people are angry right now and don’t know what to do with it. I’ve been angry for forty years. The trick isn’t to stop being angry. It’s to aim it. Walk it into the street. Stand next to someone. Let them see how many of us there are.
I close with Harvey Milk, because “You gotta give them hope.” He said that in 1978, thinking about a kid in Altoona, Pennsylvania, who had never seen a queer person stand up and say: I’m here. That was forty-eight years ago. And it’s still as powerful a message today as it was then.
March 28th. Show up. Be seen. Be counted.
All the sources and links are in the show notes below. Read them. Share the episode. And if you’re out protesting on Saturday, be safe.
— David
Resources:
No Kings — Find your event or host one: nokings.org
No Kings: Know Your Rights: nokings.org/kyr
Human Rights Campaign: hrc.org
Scott Galloway: Resist and Unsubscribe: resistandunsubscribe.com
Fast Company: “Being Gay Feels Like a Liability Again”
PBS: Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement
Library of Congress: The Stonewall Uprising
ACLU: How ACT UP Changed the Face of AIDS and Activism
Harvey Milk’s Hope Speech (1978) — Voices of Democracy, University of Maryland
A Queer POV: “They’re Coming for the Ring” (Marriage Equality Episode)
A Queer POV: Friends, Loves, & Life with David
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