Are you sick of what Pride has become? Then join Re-Claim Pride, NYC June

NO COPS, NO CORPORATIONS, NO BS!

Reclaim Pride site is HERE. 

The complex proliferation of Parades as the model for Pride Celebrations internationally is deeply disturbing to many people in the LGBTQIA2S+ communities. In the city of New York, home to the Stonewall Inn, a group of Queer activists decided the Parade in NYC had gone too far — too far from the spirt of the Stonewall Rebellion, and miles away from achieving societal equity for queer and trans people.

So was born the Reclaim Pride Coalition.

Community organizers, activists, and queers of conscience banded together after years of seeing the annual NYC Pride March transformed into a 7, then 9, then 12-hour circus. Overflowing with corporate floats and at the service of corporate money, the Pride Parade had become a new symbol of gay for pay. The imposition of barricades along the parade route separated the participants from its audience, turning the Pride March into an entertainment venue instead of a true expression of our cultural legacy. The presence of a dozen police officers at every intersection of the Parade marked the collusion of the non-profit board and the very instance of state sponsored oppression.

The Reclaim Pride Coalition stands by the tag, “No corps, no cops, no bs!”

Here is a article to get you started. It is written about the Town Hall that Reclaim Pride, NYC held to discuss the march in June.  We will keep the updates coming in as we get them. 

Reclaim Pride Coalition weighs route, theme of 2024 Queer Liberation March

By Matt Tracy & Donna Aceto

With five two months to go until Pride Sunday in New York City, members of the Reclaim Pride Coalition hosted an engaging town hall meeting at the LGBT Community Center on Jan. 26 to begin the process of plotting out the 2024 Queer Liberation March.

Throughout the meeting, individuals floated ideas pertaining to the theme and route for what will be the sixth annual edition of the Queer Liberation March, which has drawn tens of thousands of marchers annually since launching in 2019 as a grassroots alternative to the Heritage of Pride-led main march. The Queer Liberation March bars corporate sponsors and police involvement and takes place on the same final Sunday in June as the main parade. Pride Sunday falls on June 30 this year.

One of the looming decisions for this year’s Queer Liberation March involves the beginning and ending locations. The route has shifted around over the years, and while the Queer Liberation March has concluded at Washington Square Park on multiple occasions in the past, those marches have been marred by instances of police aggression at the park — and it tends to be far too crowded. 

One idea that resonated during the meeting was to start the march at Washington Square Park and end it at Battery Park, which is not as close to residential neighborhoods as Washington Square and would allow marchers to spread out more — especially if the march concludes with a rally, much like it did in the first Queer Liberation March in 2019 when folks rallied at Central Park. (Last year’s march started with a rally at Foley Square.)

Alfred Marder Presente

Word was received today of the passing of activist Alfred Marder. We join with the U.S Peace Council and the Communist Party U.S.A New Haven in mourning Al’s passing. To read a life story and beautiful tribute to Al, written by Henry Lownendorf and published int he People’s World go to HERE. 

¡Alfred Marder Presente!

It is with great sadness that we report that our beloved comrade Alfred Marder, a steadfast internationalist, and anti-imperialist, died last night. Al was exactly one month shy of reaching 102 years old.

We can hardly begin to capture Al’s profound contributions to peace, justice, and civil rights by summarizing his creative and leadership accomplishments. Indeed, it is hard to capture the influence Al has had and will continue to have going forward on so many of us in the U.S. and around the world.

For several decades, Al presided over the U.S. Peace Council, which he helped found. He was also a Vice President of the World Peace Council, forcefully engaged in conferences on every continent, and active leader of his local Peace Council, organizing and participating in every local action to build broad support for peace and justice.

Al co-founded the City of New Haven, Connecticut, Peace Commission and became its longest serving Chair. His efforts placed New Haven at the forefront of municipal peace efforts shepherding the city into the United Nation’s International Association of Peace Messenger Cities, which held its first assembly in New Haven. Al served for several terms as its only president who was not the mayor of a member city.

Al was a founder and long-term Chair of Connecticut’s Amistad Committee that brought to the public a key moment in the history of the movement to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the effort to construct and chaired Connecticut’s Freedom Trail Planning Committee, highlighting events and locations historically prominent in the struggle for African American freedom in the state and throughout the nation.

Al became president of PERA, the nonprofit organization that revived and ran the New Haven Peoples Center, a progressive community center that provided space for groups organizing peace, immigrant rights, union organizing, people’s culture and the Connecticut People’s World newspaper.

Al is a working-class hero. From the age of fourteen, during the Great Depression, Al participated in the people’s struggles for jobs and living wages, for equality, for access to higher education for workers, for cultural integration. Al became a leader of the Young Communist League, a union organizer, and a lifelong Communist for which he was arrested and prosecuted during the political witch hunts of the 1950s. Al not only survived persecution but vigorously continued his varied progressive, political activities.

Al was a working class intellectual. Despite many frailties of age, Al’s keen intellect was sharp to the very end. He was never without ideas for action and engagement in the people’s struggles. Words cannot express how much his friends, comrades, and the global peace community he was so much a part of will miss him, will miss his unbounded energy, his abundant sense of humor, truly a gift to all of us.

Al was dedicated to his family, which included many close friends. He is predeceased by his wife Nancy and son Ken. He is mourned by his daughter Rebecca, son-in-law Bill, grandchildren Emily and Adam and their families, including one great grandson.

Al Marder’s death leaves a great gap in our collective, both in the U.S. Peace Council and the World Peace Council, but our work going forward will necessarily reflect his boundless and creative energy, his iron resolve to broaden the movement for peace and justice, to engage every corner of our society in that just struggle and move people to action.

U.S. Peace Council

December 19, 2023

Banned Book Story Hour with Tara Hoot

My name’s Hilario Benzon (Él, Siya, He). I’m the Associate Director of the Human and Civil Rights Department at the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA is proud to be a part of Greater Than Hate, and I was ecstatic to be asked to join the fabulous Tara Hoot for a special Drag Story Time featuring three banned books from our Read Across America program.

Why banned books? Every student deserves a quality public education — one that imparts honesty about who we are, empathy for others, and the courage necessary to take risks and learn from mistakes. Books are one of the best tools we have to make that possible, but stories featuring the histories and experiences of queer folks and people of color are increasingly being banned from the shelves by narrow-minded extremists. 

We’re fighting back against these oppressive bans by uplifting three important stories that every student should have access to. Thank you to everyone who voted during National Library Week to help pick which books we should read. Here are the winners:

• Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford
• Leila in Saffron by Rukhsanna Guidroz
• Ho’onani: Hula Warrior by Heather Gale

Click here to watch Tara and me explore passages from these acclaimed stories and discuss the extremist agenda behind banning books.

As a sixth grade teacher, I see every day how important it is for my students to have diverse stories in their library.

Tara said it best when she called these stories “windows and mirrors.” Books featuring diverse, intersectional identities can provide windows through which kids can learn about and empathize with people unlike them. At the same time, these books can be mirrors that reflect and validate the identities of the kids reading them, helping them feel safer and more accepted in the world around them.

But a vocal minority of extremist lawmakers want to ban any book that doesn’t conform to their bigoted ideology, no matter who it hurts or how it degrades our childrens’ education. Their agenda is clear: they want to control the narrative ​​— and us. That’s why it’s so important that we unite across our differences to defend the freedom to read.

Watch Greater Than Hate’s Drag Story Time video now, featuring me and local drag phenom Tara Hoot, to learn more about the sinister agenda behind book bans and what YOU can do right now to help fight back.

Thank you for being a part of this bold mission to lift up vital, life-affirming stories.

In solidarity,

Hilario Benzon

Associate Director, Human and Civil Rights Department, NEA

Greater Than Hate 

Foolish folks at Ct. Virtual Pride.

By Richard, May Day, punkpink and Old Joey

We have been following closely the facebook page of Ct. Virtual Pride brought to the state by some well-meaning folks who have an audience and followers of 1,177. Many times, when looking over the postings we love to see how many people who have liked, or loved a post and what type of post it is. As old Queer revolutionaries we are interested to note how people in the LGBT movement are using the gains that we made and how do they respond when under attack. Did they learn the great lesson of our many fight backs or didn’t they.

Now be sure readers get this. The folks who visit this page are mainly people in the lgbt and ally community who run or are involved in Pride celebrations in various towns in Ct. Folks who one would think had a bit more political knowledge than what is the latest trinket and bauble. Many times, we are confronted with silly ass statements that show the writer has no idea about the subject at hand. It seems that this group this mostly new group to the (movement) pave their way to liberation with trinkets fluff, gay beer, kisses from cops, rainbow crosswalks, doggie pride parades, and other assorted nonsense.

The other day we had a terrible shudder. This I hope will illustrate what we are talking about and why when the shit hits the fan these folks will be up shits creek without a paddle to put it mildly. I suppose that is a better place to be than having a fascist drop you out of an airplane over the ocean. (that dear folks is what happened to many transgender people, mostly drag queens in Chile when the fascists took over.)

A meme posted by Ct. Pride about the latest (making money off of the gay folks) but with the “We are ok as we give back some of the money”) is by a new product to enter and to the movement away from liberation towards a false front, something called Even Gayer Light Beer. This posting has received 26 Likes and Loves. Yes, it is nice, and I get it due to the recent flap over Dylan Mulvaney appearing on a beer can, (We have indeed come a long way baby) or so we thought but Capitalist are fickle, and Anheuser Busch has all but abandoned the cause. We would have loved to see and preferred a full blow Drag Queen on Even Gayer Light Beer. Any way we digress. Here is the newest commodity the newest fad being presented to gaydom and lapped up by the Ct. Pride Community. And yes, folks this is a real beer.

So now let us take a look at another meme that is posted on Ct. Virtual Pride. This posting received 13 likes. This posting is one of great importance to our LGBTQI+ communities. To all of us. This posting talks about the fascist war against the Transgender communities. This posting warns us that the worse could be coming down the road as the republican party goose steps their way to a Christian Nationalist Fascist country. Stop them by any means necessary must be our shout. Take a look take a long look at this posting.

We are amazed of the contrast in the likes of the beer post and the likes of the post to Let Her Speak poster of Rep. Zooey Zephyr of Montana. Talk about privilege of the folks who think that all is okay in the state of Connecticut. Enough to turn us off and puke enough to fill a bucket. We call for all Queer revolutionaries to take over the stage of all prides in Connecticut. Take it and speak out. Upset the apple cart of the foolish. Ring out danger, as obviously folks in Ct. are standing on some mighty shoulders and they don’t even know it or give a flying fuck. Give me a trinket, give me a beer, here I am and I am queer. (No you are not. Queer is a political animal unwilling to play kiss, kiss with those who make the rules) Harry Hay warned us that this day would come and here it is. Is this what our Connecticut movement has become? We asked the Lesbian and Gay community on the advent of the passing of the right to marry, and the right to kill just like the straight boys, what are you going to do with all of this newfound freedom? We ask the same to those who now are the so-called leaders in the movement. Remember it’s easy to give a party but it’s the beyond it’s the real deal stuff that gives us the liberation that we require. It has caused us to stop and say, “Why the fuck are we fighting for these types of people?” They are not us and we are not them. Give it up and on to more important work.

Connecticut Pride Festivals 2023 For those who may want to stomp on the stage and ruffle some feathers.

FREIHEIT sung here for those who live in neo-fascist states in the U.S.A. We will not be quiet.

Let’s listen this weekend to Freiheit.  A Call for Freedom. We know that we cannot be quiet and we must shout even louder.

Freiheit

This song is from 1936 and was written by Gudrun Kabisch and Paul Dessau, German anti-fascists. The song was written for the International Brigades and especially the Thaelman Column from Germany. Freiheit translates as “Freedom” in English.

This song makes reference to the struggle of the anti-Franco fighters and to the more general struggle for freedom.

We listen to this song today to remind all of us in America that the rise of fascism in this country cannot be tolerated, yes freedom is faraway for many living in the states where legal fascism is in operation and even though we live here in the safety of a liberal state that we must be ready to fight for our people. Let us listen to Freiheit as a lesson from history and remember that we must fight like all we have so we never get to the other steps, to whatever the republican neo-fascists have in store for our people. With every book that is banned, with every school not able to teach FULL Black History, or say the word GAY, with every trans kid not getting the medical care they need, with every Pride canceled, and every drag queen put out of work and suppressed, we know that the cry out and loud must be FREEDOM!

Here are the lyrics in German.

Spaniens Himmel breitet seine Sterne
Über unsre Schützengraben aus;
Und der Morgen grüßt schon aus der Ferne,
Bald geht es zum neuen Kampf hinaus.

Chorus
Die Heimat ist weit,
Doch wir sind bereit,
Wir kämpfen und siegen für dich:
Freiheit!

Dem Faschisten werden wir nicht weichen,
Schickt er auch die Kugeln hageldicht.
Mit uns stehen Kameraden ohne gleichen
Und ein Rückwärts gibt es für uns nicht.

Chorus
Die Heimat ist weit,
Doch wir sind bereit,
Wir kämpfen und siegen für dich:
Freiheit!

Rührt die Trommel. Fällt die Bajonette.
Vorwärts marsch. Der Sieg ist unser Lohn.
Mit der roten Fahne brecht die Kette.
Auf zum Kampf das Thälmann Bataillon.

Chorus
Die Heimat ist weit,
Doch wir sind bereit,
Wir kämpfen und siegen für dich:
Freiheit!

Here is another version that will bring you back to the days when the German anti-fascists marched in Spain.

Spaniens Himmel

A Video leading up to Transgender Day of Visibility

This video was finished in the last year of Jerimarie Liesegang’s life. It was an honor for me to work with her on this project and several other videos on OurStories.

It is our hope that young people and folks who have just come into the movement in recent years will take the time to watch this important video. So many do not know OurStories and are lacking in even basic knowledge about how we as a community got to where we are today.

 

In early 2020, Jerimarie Liesegang, the mother of the Ct. Transgender Political Movement and Queer Activist and speaker of OurStories Richard Nelson collaborated on this documentary of the Transgender Movement, starting from the early days in the 1800’s of drag through to a movement within CT to empower and bring visibility to the diverse trans community. The video begins with William Dorsey Swann (c. 1858) an American gay liberation activist. The video will lead us through the years up to the political Transgender movement in Connecticut and includes a section on Drag Balls and the famous first drag ball in Ct., While Paris was Burning, Hartford Sizzled with interviews with folks who made it happen.

 

Our ride through OurStories has interviews with Trans activists, statements on the Justice for Jane Movement in Ct., Trans Day of Remembrance, and the fight for basic civil rights for Transgender folks who live it Connecticut. Want to learn more about our people who said NO, who fought back? Take a stroll through a very important part of OurStories. The archives of the Equity Diversity Collection, The Rev. Canon Clinton Jones Archives at CCSU and other sources were used to create this video, a collage in the service of the people.

 

We said at the time, this video is a collection of OurStories, take them and run with them. They belong to all of us, add to them, be inspired by them, and most of all learn them as we continue to fight back against the rise of fascism in this country. We know that there are compasses and weapons throughout OurStories and it is our job to find them and use them.

 

This playing of the video on Ct. Virtual Pride is dedicated to Jerimarie Liesegang, her wife Anna Schadler, Alvin Burgher, Paco Martinez Cancel, and all of our Transgender liberation warriors and comrades. May their memories be a blessing and a revolution. May we always remember the words, When We Are Under Attack, Stonewall Means Fight Back.

 

International Women’s Day. We stand with our Lesbian, Transgender and Radical Women Fighting For Their Rights!

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer + Walking Tour of Downtown Hartford Stop 5

Stop 5: 368 Columbus Blvd.

There is a lot to take in on this stop.

We are now standing at the site of the old Chez Est one of Hartford’s gay bars. At this site we will talk about other gay and lesbian bars in the city. At this stop today we are here to celebrate, to mourn and to learn. We are here to talk about a bar as a meeting place, and social club for LGBTQI+ peoples for many years. We will also talk about at this stop the murder of Richard Reihl in 1988 and the response of the community to this hate crime, and the building of a movement that fought back and won. While we are here, we will gaze across the street to what was the Connecticut Live Poultry shop, the place where Nicky La Torre fought city hall, the Travelers Insurance Company and developers and refused to move out of his shop. Fighting Power and showing people how it could be done. Refusing. Plain and simple. (1)

Why don’t we begin this stop with a look at our bars, meeting places where we could get together and be free or so we thought. We go to gay bars not just to drink or pick up someone but to celebrate our own desires in a safe place, away from homophobic hecklers and heterosexuality. I always felt in a bar I did not have to pretend that I was anything that I wasn’t and for that evening I wasn’t forced to live in a straight world which I had to do every day.

Raids of our bars, bathhouses and other gathering places were a common occurrence in ourstories. An essay on this blog, Bathhouses, Bookstores and the Bushes is found HERE.

The following two stories are a must to be told.

American’s First Lesbian Bar

1925: Eve’s Hangout a speakeasy in the West Village in New York City where, “men were admitted but not welcomed” was run by Eve Adams a gender blending pseudonym for Eve Kotchever, a Jewish immigrant who opened the Lesbian speakeasy and tearoom. Weekly poetry readings, musical performances and salons where sexual topics were freely discussed were held. A number of radical activists frequented the tearoom. In 1926 a female undercover officer entered the tearoom where Eve was showing her collection of short stories, she was writing called Lesbian Love. Eve was arrested on the charge of disorderly conduct and for allegedly making homosexual advances toward the officer. Her manuscript along with other objectionable books was seized as obscene material. Eve was sentenced to a year in the workhouse and deported to Poland in 1926. In the 1930’s Eve and her partner moved to Paris and after the Nazi invasion they fled to Nice where in 1943 during a roundup of Jews and taken to Auschwitz. She died there in 1943. (Now if I were a teacher, I would inform my students that they must and I do mean must read this article, Tragic Details About The Founder of America’s First Lesbian Bar found HERE.

Where would we begin to tell the story about raids on our bars, bathhouses and other gathering places. There has been so many in all major cities. NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project has a listing with photographs found HERE. A police raid on a gay bar could be disastrous for those arrested. Not only would the raid likely make the papers but those arrested saw their names printed along with their addresses and occupations.

Horror and more: BEWARE THE NEO-NAZIS AND NEO-FASCISTS ROAMING THE STREETS OF AMERIKKKA. YES ITS STILL IS GOING ON HERE TODAY.

1937:  Over 200 members of the KKK raids the La Paloma a Gay club in Dade County Florida. The Klan stormed the club, roughed up the staff and performers, threatened patrons and ordered the nightclub closed. Local police raided the club two weeks later. The patrons, club management and performers responded with a call for resistance to the police, a building of community, and the club became a site of resistance to the conservative political forces in Dade County.

The following is taken from an essay by Julio Capo Jr.

“We should not assume, either, that such raids are simply cautionary tales of a bygone era. More recent events, such as the raid of Rainbow Lounge (Fort Worth, 2009), Eagle (Atlanta, 2009), and perhaps even the offices of Rentboy.com, an escort service (New York City, 2015), make clear that these so-called “safe” spaces—even as they have evolved and transformed over time—are still hotly contested and surveillance by the state.”  To find out more about this raid go to, “Why a forgotten KKK raid on a Gay Club in Miami still matters 80 years later written by Julio Capo Jr.

Here is an opening to an essay that we wrote about the cops and the LGBT community.

“One thing that we know from ourstories past is that there has never been any love affair between the LGBTQ population and the cops. No matter what city or town we live in this has always been the case. From Dewey’s, to Coopers, from Compton’s, to The Black Cat and on to Stonewall. From cruising by the river side, to the tearooms and backrooms, from the parks to the drag balls, to our political demonstrations our people have never been safe. We cross their line; we are the other. The Transgender Community is more than aware of this. “How did the rising at Coopers Donuts (1959), Dewey Lunch (1965), Compton’s Cafeteria (1966), and Stonewall Inn (1969) start? With polices raids on these gathering places, many times checking patrons for three items of male clothing. In other words, they were looking for trans people.  Thousands of our women and men have been arrested, their lives ruined. But still we fight back. We know we have to; our lives depend on it. Many of the people who were at the forefront of these protests were people who did not conform to established gender roles set by society which everyone was supposed to follow.”

“The Police are obsessed with the desire to supervise and regulate people for instance, they object to our dancing together. Next to sec, dancing is one of our most important of human joys. I believe that I speak for all homosexuals, and certainly for the Mattachine Society, when I say we oppose police and other supervision.”  Harry Call President of the Mattachine

In 1967 some were aware what to say about the police and their treatment of the LGBT community. And today some cuddle, playing kiss kiss and some know better.

Black Cat Traven Protest 1967

Real Deal Pride

Not the Trinket Tribe type of Pride. 

Familia June 2022 Recap

During Pride month we took #NoPrideInDetention to another level with 11 actions, engaging more than 800 people nationwide. We rallied in the face of anti-LGBTQIA, and anti-immigrant laws attacking our community nationwide. Pride month has ended but we won’t stop until trans people are free, and until we can all live a life with dignity, joy and respect. #EndTransDetention NOW! Join us!

Durante el mes del Orgullo llevamos #NoPrideInDetention a otro nivel con 11 acciones, involucrando a más de 800 personas en todo el país. Nos manifestamos frente a las leyes anti-LGBTQIA y antiinmigrantes que atacan a nuestra comunidad en todo el país. El mes del orgullo ha terminado, pero no nos detendremos hasta que las personas trans sean libres y hasta que todes podamos vivir una vida con dignidad, alegría y respeto. ¡#FinALasDetencionesTrans AHORA! ¡Únete a nosotres!

Forget about rainbow crosswalks, cops blowing kisses, self-promoting politicians, and trinkets, trinkets and more trinkets.

QUEER LIBERATION MARCH
FOR TRANS AND BIPOC FREEDOM, REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE,
AND BODILY AUTONOMY

Sun June 26, 2022 – 2PM at FOLEY SQUARE

March to Washington Square Park.

For information go to HERE.