photo by Kate Hoos

Queer Liberation March 2019 in pics

Amanda Hatfield

July 1, 2019

photo by Kate Hoos

While the rainbow-festooned spectacle that was the WorldPride edition of the Pride March drew over a hundred thousand people to 5th Ave, 7th Ave, and The Village on Sunday, an alternative Pride March, with the goal of “reclaiming Pride” from corporations and police, started at Christopher Street and headed north to Central Park’s Great Lawn. The inaugural Queer Liberation March was a protest march akin to Saturday’s Dyke March, where participation by anyone was encouraged, and police and barricades weren’t welcome.

Reclaim Pride on Why We March:

We March in our communities’ tradition of resistance against police, state, and societal oppression, a tradition that is epitomized and symbolized by the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.

We March against the exploitation of our communities for profit and against corporate and state pinkwashing, as displayed in Pride celebrations worldwide, including the NYC Pride Parade.

We March in opposition to transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry based on religious affiliation, classism, ableism, audism, ageism, all other forms of oppression, and the violence that accompanies them in the U.S. and globally.

We March for an end to individual and institutional expressions of hate and violence as well as government policies that deny us our rights and our very lives, from the NYPD to ICE, from the prison industrial complex to state repression worldwide.

We March to oppose efforts that deny our communities’ rights and that brutally erase queer people worldwide.

We March against domestic and global neoliberalism and the ascendance of the far right, against poverty and economic inequality, against U.S. military aggression, and against the threat that is climate change.

We March to affirm that healthcare is a right, including treatment for all people with HIV/AIDS worldwide and intensive prevention efforts, and to demand an end to HIV stigma and criminalization.

We are trans, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, non-binary, gender non-conforming + and allies.

We March to celebrate our communities and history, in solidarity with other oppressed groups, and to demand social and economic justice worldwide—we March for Liberation!

The post-March rally in Central Park included many celebrity appearances including John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask who performed music from Hedwig & the Angry Inch, like they just had three nights in a row at Town Hall, as well as Justin Vivian Bond (who incidentally recently collaborated with John Cameron Mitchell as a cast member in John’s new Anthem: Homunculus podcast), and others. Check out pictures in the gallery above, and watch a few video clips of the performances and speeches below.