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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 19, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Boston Pride: Stonewall float wins award

By Mahtowin in Boston

On June 7, more than 100,000 people came out for Boston's Gay Pride march, the biggest in New England. This year, the Boston branch of Workers World Party and the National People's Campaign created a prize-winning parade float commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.

The float, themed "Stonewall Means Fight Back," was a flatbed truck decorated as a stone wall with graffiti political slogans written on the wall. In addition, members of the Boston branch who died from AIDS were honored on the wall, as was Chanelle Picket, a transgendered person who was brutally murdered in Boston.

The crowd cheered and applauded supporters of WWP and the NPC when they chanted, "Celebrate, demonstrate-pride is political" and called for a united fight against Clinton, the cops, the pope and other agents of repression. Other chants demanded an end to lesbian, gay, bi and trans oppression and more funding for AIDS research.

The float won the Boston Pride `97 Committee's Stonewall Award for its combination of the "loudest politics and best drag." And Workers World Contributing Editor and nationally known transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg addressed the Boston Pride rally, calling for unity in the struggle against oppression.

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