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2024 Pride parade intervention

A group blocking the parade’s progress with banners, most wearing masks and many with keffiyehs

After years of Pride Winnipeg ignoring community concerns, a group of people intervened to stop the parade and make demands, see the handout that was distributed or read its contents below.

handout
This was handed out at the intervention
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There is NO PRIDE in GENOCIDE

Pride began as a protest against police violence and the criminalization of queer and trans people. It has strayed far from its revolutionary roots, so far that today we protest Pride itself and hold accountable those who claim to represent us.

We have not come far enough from the first Pride in Winnipeg in 1987 where marchers wore bags on their heads for fear of repercussions. Yet even amid rising attacks against us, Two-Spirit, trans, and queer people are leading the creation of a better world.​​​​​​

​​We call on Pride to return to being a space of community building toward liberation, of celebration of radical queer and trans joy for all, particularly our BIPOC, unhoused, sex working, migrant, and disabled relatives.

We reject that Pride must be built on corporate profiteering and complicity in genocide: a party thrown in our names with space for police, military, and banks and corporations funding ongoing genocides from Turtle Island to Palestine.

We protest the silencing of and disproportionate violence toward Two-Spirit and Indigenous people, and the pinkwashing of genocide from Turtle Island to Palestine.

Queer and trans love is resistance. An anti-racist Pride that rejects colonialism is possible. Our Two-Spirit, queer, and trans elders have shown us that revolutionary Pride is possible and necessary.

Resistance is the deepest form of love

In the traditions of Two-Spirit, queer and trans resistance
we demand that Pride Winnipeg:

1. End complicity with genocide

Implement the MMIWG2S Calls for Justice, particularly calls 15.1 through 15.8.

Publicly state support for searching the landfills.

Direct resources to Indigenous groups and work with them to identify tangible ways Pride Winnipeg can support their initiatives.

Refuse to allow Zionist organizations that support the genocidal occupation of Palestine a platform or place in Pride events.

2. Divest from corporate pinkwashing

Refuse sponsorship and participation in events for corporations and institutions that fund or profit from the occupation of Palestine and climate chaos, including TD Bank and weapons manufacturer Boeing.

Demonstrate transparency by having participants make public all corporate, private, and public sponsors/donors. 

Return to the grassroots spirit of Pride by rejecting the neoliberal, capitalist, and corporate influences that now dominate Pride.

3. Remove police from Pride

End all contracts and dialogue with police and military.

Block the presence of police officers and military at all future Pride celebrations.

4. Centre QTBIPOC leadership

Commit resources to the creation of and support for QTBIPOC spaces and events at Pride.

Revisit Pride Winnipeg’s 2020 statement of support for Black Lives Matter and commit to the radical demands of Black Liberation and Freedom movements.