Spirit of Stonewall revived

In the midst of a cold driving rain, Stonewall Warriors/International Action Center organized the single biggest contingent at this year’s Boston Pride march on June 10. The “Unifying Our Struggles” float provided joyous music, multinational marchers and placards with slogans that truly reflected the struggles facing LGBT communities in Boston and elsewhere.

Boston, June 10. WW photo: Liz Green

Marchers from community organizations revived the true spirit of Stonewall, demanding an end to institutionalized transphobia, funds for LGBT youth organizations, money for AIDS and not for war, and an end to racial profiling and the anti-immigrant policies of Bush, the racist Minutemen, and their corporate sponsors.

The Stonewall Warriors/International Action Center initiated the contingent, with the solid organizing of QueerToday .com, the Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, United Steel workers of America Local 8751 (the Boston school bus drivers’ union), the Women’s Fightback Network and Workers World Party. Endorsements and support also came from New England Black Gay Pride and the Somos Latin@s LGBT Coalition.

Pride in Boston came just as the huge Macy’s Department Store chain yielded to the demands of the homophobic Article 8 Coalition and pulled a gay male manne guin display from its downtown store, along with a sign from the AIDS Action Committee, New England’s oldest and largest AIDS service organization. Queer Today.com quickly organized a protest the next day, June 11, at Macy’s downtown store.

Massachusetts has the only legal civil marriage rights in the United States and local LGBT groups have therefore drawn constant attacks from right-wing organizations like Fred Phelps’ group, also Focus on the Family and the Article 8 Coalition,. The largely radical queer youth in the “Unifying Our Struggles” contingent and their alliance partners at Boston 2006 Pride showed that a new phase of struggle and fightback is alive—and growing.