Thursday, April 27, 2017

Someone actually wrote this: Pride fests and those evil corporations

In The Advocate, Alex Morash writes,
Today our rights are threatened again, and many in the LGBT community are afraid of what is happening to our country. We need a Pride that marches for our community’s struggles; it's time to march, protest, and resist!
What concrete suggestion does Morash make?
Pride celebrations in most major cities have gotten stale, using the same tired model that focuses on a parade that is filled with big corporate sponsors hawking their wares.
Businesses are increasingly willing to accept us, and that's terrible! It's bad when businesses choose to accept us but good when government compels them to, or something.
In these times we need Pride to courageously stand up to corporate interests and get back to being a march for our rights.
So we should stand up to those who are willing to be our allies? I thought that the point of such a march would be stand up to those who actually threaten our rights.
This is at the heart of why the national Pride march is getting so much attention; it’s not speaking to the affluent or to big corporations, it’s speaking to everyday working-class queers
So everyday working-class queers don't buy goods or services or otherwise participate in a market economy? That's useful to know.
— an audacious act in today’s LGBT community
How's the weather on Counter-Earth?
When Pride committees allow corporations to feature so prominently, Pride comes off as supporting corporate interests over the needs of our community.
False dichotomy is false.
Does anyone think the Pride events of today, filled with luxury brands truly speak to the one out of every five LGBT people living below the federal poverty line or, for that matter, to the rest of us who are not wealthy?
I've somehow overlooked all of those luxury brands. Are the promotional t-shirts by Brioni, or are the likes of Hot 99.5 FM, Food Lion, and Coca-Cola now luxury brands?
Pride needs to speak for us, and we need Pride to reflect who we really are — diverse, not all affluent, and proud to come in every color of the rainbow.
Should Pride reflect an ideologically diverse community in which not everyone buys into trendy anti-capitalism? Also, as the commenters ask, how will Pride get paid for otherwise?

See also Needlessly alienating potential allies and A movement, not a market?.

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