Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP, Getty Images
Buried toward the lower end of the New York City Pride parade’s partner section on its website, beneath community organisations devoted to the cause of advancing equal rights for LGBTQ people, are slew of corporate giants which have little history of positive activism.
They’re all organised under a tier system, with banks and beer companies trading in solidarity with other public firms, characterised by their respective “platinum,” “gold,” “silver,” and “bronze” statuses. It’s the kind of sponsorship roster you might expect of a NASCAR event or college Bowl game, but Pride is a tradition rooted in radicalism; its catalyst was a brutal and unlawful crackdown against New York City’s gay community by the NYPD in 1969, culminating in the Stonewall Riots and the ensuing decades of activism that propelled gay rights to the mainstream.
Capitol Hill Pride bans police officers for 2021 march and rally this June
A rainbow crosswalk in Seattle s Capitol Hill neighborhood. (SDOT, Flickr Creative Commons)
Capitol Hill Pride has announced a ban on participation by police at the group’s march and rally scheduled for the end of June.
This comes in the wake of a similar decision from New York City Pride, banning NYPD police officers from marching in the annual parade through 2025.
While citing many of the same reasons NYC Pride addressed, Capitol Hill Pride which operates as a separate entity from Seattle Pride centers its justifications specifically on recent controversies involving the Seattle Police Department, including six officers who were in Washington, D.C., during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.