LOS ANGELES—Over 100,000 workers came out to show their support for the LGBTQ members of our class and all workers facing repression. In the past, LA Pride has hosted a parade and street fair in West Hollywood.
A local congregation with Progressive Labor Party members has marched in the parade with banners and signs proclaiming our church’s long history of performing gay marriages and supporting LGBTQ rights.
This year, in this period of heightened sexism and racism, especially towards immigrant and Muslim workers, the organizers announced that there would be a #Resist March for “human rights” instead.
We in PLP understand that there can be no rights for the working class under capitalism but applaud the efforts to broaden this struggle.
Rampant Racism
The roots of Pride originate in rebellion against racist, sexist, anti-gay police terror that we still see today. Black transgender women and gay men still face far more police harassment, terror and incarceration than any group within the LGBTQ section of our class and the working-class as a whole.
The rate of HIV/AIDS has recently reached staggering numbers. One in two Black gay men or transwomen will contract HIV in their lifetime. In other words, if the Black gay and trans youth and workers in the U.S. were a country, it would lead the world in HIV/AIDS rates.
Anti-Gay Violence & Police Terror Interrelated
In 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York at the Stonewall Inn bar, led by Black and Latin transgender, gay and lesbian patrons rebellions erupted against the police who raided and terrorized them. In fact, the first Pride march in Los Angeles in 1970 was also a response to police terror against the LGBTQ working class. Over the years though, Pride has become a weekend of celebration culminating in a parade.
Anger Limited to Anti-Trump
This year, the march itself was a step up in the level of political anger. Unfortunately, it was almost exclusively directed at Trump and the Republicans, instead of also calling out the complicity of the Democrats and the capitalist system as a whole—which requires police terror, racism, sexism and anti-gay politics to divide our class in order to maximize profits.
Through mass organizing in the church, on the job, and in the schools we were able to organize over a dozen base members to join a multiracial, multigenerational group of workers. When we passed a group of anti-gay counter-protesters, we led the group in a chant of “No Trump, No KKK, No fascist USA!”
But we have a long way to go in overcoming the identity politics, nationalism and pro-democrat ideology which are rampant in the march and in this congregation—all of which keep the working class more divided.
Mayor Garcetti, No Friend of Working Class
Mayor Eric Garcetti, the first Jewish mayor and second Mexican mayor of Los Angeles, who is a frequent speaker at Pride (and Women’s March) is not only given a platform to speak but is called “a champion of LGBTQ rights.” He gives lip service to the plight of transgender workers who face higher rates of unemployment and double the homelessness in the nation, claiming “this is a city built on diversity and inclusiveness…transgender Angelenos have limitless potential and deserve every chance to find employment” (LGBT Weekly, 12/2016). Under his leadership, the rates of homelessness (which increases the risk of HIV transmission) continue to rise under his tenure just as the number of unaffordable luxury condos sprout all over the city.
He’s justified the continuing privatization (charters) of public schools in LA that disproportionately affect Black, Latin and immigrant workers. He is silent while the school board terrorizes the students who walked out after the Trump inauguration and teachers face suspensions for supporting these students (including one PLP teacher). And while LA boasts the most diverse police force, the LAPD KKKops continue to the lead the way in the number of Black and Latin workers murdered by the police!
Next time, we have to do a better job at calling out these liberal misleaders for their role in the racist, sexist, anti-gay attacks on our class!