Occupy Activists Vow To Disrupt SF Pride

A subset of Occupy San Francisco calling itself OccuPride has vowed to disrupt this Sunday's gay pride parade. SFist has a quote from an organizer:

[W]e shouldn't be deifying companies and politicians that actively work against SF Pride's theme of GLOBAL EQUALITY. Don't forget Willie Brown, the Lifetime Grand Marshall is famous for saying 'anyone who doesn't make $50,000 a year doesn't have a right to live in SF. And even more shocking, many of the companies that are featured sponsors, like Wells Fargo, actively work and lobby against Global Equality at home, abroad and within the LGBTQI community. How many of our people have been displaced due to the economic collapse? How many of our people have been denied lifesaving health insurance because of preexisting conditions? This is why I started Occupying last fall, this is why I helped organize and outreach for OccuPride.

The group Gay Shame San Francisco has made similar actions in previous years. From the OccuPride website:

The Pride celebration has become increasingly commercialized, co-opted by corporate interests that use our struggle for liberation as a market for commodities and a way to boost profit. These interests – the top of the 1% – parade status quo candidates and parties for our consumption, wearing a progressive mask of LGBT equality while marginalizing and criminalizing the poor and disempowered. In doing so they seek to divide our community, catering only to those of us with money to spend. But the queer and trans communities are more than the affluent; we are also the disempowered, the homeless, the sick, the victims of discrimination and violence. So we must Occupy Pride.

It bears mentioning that even the largest pride organizations like San Francisco's operate at a perilous margin of fiscal viability and that without corporate sponsorships, massive events that require enormous police coverage, liability insurance, and huge stages could never take place. And perhaps more importantly, it is often at pride events where corporations first dip their toes into the pink water, moves which are often preceded by internal improvements for LGBT employees. (Tipped by JMG reader Robert)