Typically in the month of June, we see mass parties and parades across the world celebrating the “liberation” of LGBTQIA+ individuals in what they deem Pride month. A few days before so-called Pride month this year on May 25, George Floyd was brutally murdered by Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, spurring mass African resistance around the world.
Only two days later on May 27, African trans man Tony McDade was shot and killed by Tallahassee police. These two men faced the same conditions and shared the same fate because the police act as a militarized occupying force in every working class African community. The gay liberation movement did not stop the lynching of Tony McDade.
The Stonewall Rebellion was an act of African resistance!
In the 1960s, African people inside the U.S. rose up to resist colonialism and white power by fighting for a black power revolution! This sparked anti-colonial revolutionary actions across the world including what we know as the Stonewall Rebellion.
The Stonewall Rebellion was a mighty six-day long battle in 1969 between the New York police department and LGBTQIA+ African and Indigenous peoples who frequented a gay bar called Stonewall. African trans woman Marsha P. Johnson and Puerto Rican trans woman Sylvia Rivera led this victorious fight, crushing their enemy and driving them out of the community!
Many white LGBTQIA+ people see the Stonewall Rebellion as the onset of the gay liberation movement. Before this fierce resistance, white LGBTQIA+ hid away in underground bars and met up in secret in the middle of the night, never having any “pride” for who they were.
They had done this for hundreds of years until they saw the resistance of African people in the Black Power Movement and especially not until Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera fought back! But instead of uniting with the resistance against colonialism, white opportunists took the narrative of the Stonewall Rebellion to then fight for their own rights at the expense of African and colonized people.
White rights at the expense of African people
The gay liberation movement was supposed to liberate all LGBTQIA+ peoples to live freely. But it did no such thing.
In fact, it eventually united with U.S. imperialism for us white LGBTQIA+ people to live more comfortably while stepping on the backs of African, Indigenous and colonized people to gain our rights. Advocating for our right to be in the military and in the police force, we have completely united with being on the enemy’s side of the battle that the Stonewall Rebellion fought against.
Pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into marriage equality campaigns, we can now utilize this colonial institution to have equal rights to the stolen loot and stolen Indigenous land for our white settler families to continue to occupy. Climbing the parasitic capitalist ladder to become CEOs of companies that extract wealth from Africa and labor from African people, we are one with the colonizer/oppressor nation.
Nothing has changed for the African working class since the Stonewall Rebellion. In fact, the rebellion’s fearless leader, Marsha P. Johnson was assassinated 23 years later in 1992 with the NYPD widely suspected as the culprit.
As so-called Pride month is here, what do we have to celebrate? What do we have “pride” in? The current African resistance against police terror that is occurring in every state in the U.S. and many countries around the world has forced us to look at our relationship to this system that continues to carry out genocide in our name against African people every single day, whether they are LGBTQIA+ or not.
“Rainbow capitalism” is parasitic capitalism!
For so-called Pride month, imperialist corporations all over the world emerge with rainbow logos to show their “support” for LGBTQIA+ individuals. Not only are they using “rainbow capitalism” — a white left liberal term referring to the Pride/LGBTQIA+ branding of corporations for the month of June, but they are doing this while benefiting off of the genocide of African and Indigenous peoples and the theft of their land, resources and labor.
This is parasitic capitalism! Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) tells us that capitalism was born parasitic and would not exist without the assault on Africa and African people and the continuation of their oppression today.
JP Morgan Chase owes reparations and CEO Jamie Dimon has to pay!
JP Morgan Chase has won a perfect score for LGBTQIA+ equality for over 16 years. Yet their wealth is built from the slave trade, as they held 13,000 African people as collateral on loans in the early 19th century. They also currently invest in the colonial prison industry, profiting off of the mass incarceration of African and Indigenous peoples. JP Morgan Chase owes reparations and CEO Jamie Dimon needs to pay! We cannot only be against the commercialization of Pride celebrations; we have to fight against parasitic capitalism, under the leadership of the anti-colonial revolution.
Join the fight against parasitic capitalism and colonial police terror!
As white LGBTQIA+ people, we have to hop off the pedestal of oppression and join in solidarity with African resistance to see the end of colonialism. We cannot continue to settle for a deal with the State for a gentler imperialism.
The only way we can ensure this doesn’t happen is to be under the leadership of the revolutionary vanguard of the African working class, the African People’s Socialist Party, which emerged after the defeat of the Black Revolution of the 1960s and has survived countless counterinsurgency attacks since.
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement is where we need to be. The APSP created this organization as a way for white people to have principled solidarity with African resistance by remaining accountable to the work of the African Revolution. The reparations we raise go to the Black Power Blueprint, African-led self-determination and self-empowerment programs for black community control of food, clothing, housing, commerce and so much else.
We must pay reparations, raise reparations and demand reparations from our white ruling class for the centuries of slavery, lynchings, incarceration, police terror and all colonial violence the African community faces daily.
Join the movement of white people who unite with the struggle of African people for liberation and reparations! Participate in the Make Wall Street Pay Reparations Campaign led by Uhuru Solidarity Movement under the leadership of the APSP! Kick JP Morgan Chase out of Pride until CEO Jamie Dimon pays reparations to the Black Power Blueprint!
Justice for George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Marsha P. Johnson!
Make Wall Street Pay Reparations!
Go to uhurusolidarity.org/wallstreet
Join Uhuru Solidarity Movement!
Go to uhurusolidarity.org/join
Read more about the Black Power Blueprint at blackpowerblueprint.org
No pride in genocide!
Unity Through Reparations!
