The Best & Worst of L.A. Pride So Far
Thursday Thoughts
Let’s make this an easy one.
1) The Cops.
Cops should not be at Pride. Cops should not be participators in Pride. Cops should not have little recruiting booths and tents or rainbow decals for their cars. Pride is not a collaboration. Do not let the Disney-fication, the brand-ification, the propaganda, or the consumerism let you forget it. Pride is a protest …against them.
The 1967 raid at Los Angeles’ Black Cat and the 1969 assault at New York’s Stonewall Inn were police brutality. The actions of queer people in response to that police brutality were met with more police brutality. The work was never about law or enforcement, because if it was, the end of the line for queer Americans would’ve simply been jail. For cops, it was about the fear, torture, violence, and death that could be rained down on queer people — while on and off the clock — with impunity. Their targets were ‘clean cut’ white gays, black trans women, and everyone in between.
In 1970, America’s first ever organized ‘Gay parade’ happened in Los Angeles. LAPD Police Chief Ed Davis, in partnership with the City of Los Angeles tried, through extreme fees and permit denials, to stop it from happening. The parade finally happened only after an ACLU intervention.
In 2017, the West Hollywood Sheriffs, the coroner, and Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey did nothing when the body of Gemmel Moore, a young Black man, was found dead in the drug-filled apartment of Ed Buck, a wealthy white man and political donor. Despite this death, and despite neighbors complaining about the frequency of drugged black men stumbling out of his home, Buck was free to lure, drug, assault, and run experiments on countless unconscious Black men until finally killing again in 2019.
In 2021, the budgets of the LA School Police Dept (LASPD), which for years have led to the over-policing of black and brown children (25% of students arrested by LASPD were in elementary & middle school), finally got slashed.
The school police budgets included money for literal grenade launchers and cannibalized funding for the critical counseling, mediation, social work, and behavioral care crucial to students, especially to queer youth. When calls to defund the LASPD showed up in 2020, and budgets for officers were nominally reallocated to care-minded programs in 2021, many cops resigned in protest. Because if they couldn’t brutalize children in schools, then what was even the point of being a cop?
In the larger view of the city, bloated LAPD police budgets, which are drafted by the mayor and approved without issue by literally the most corrupt city council in the history of this planet, have increasingly siphoned what should be funding for housing preservation, renter protections, affordable housing creation, and regularly audited and maintained social services. The city’s non-plan is to continue to criminalize homelessness and to hand-off the responsibility and management of unhoused Angelenos to police who eagerly meet poverty, vagrancy, car sleeping, and loitering with force.
As a result, Los Angeles is the city with the largest homeless population in America, with 40% of those under age 24 identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise non-heterosexual. Their tents will swept out of parks and off parade routes for Pride weekend festivities.
What else? Oh, um, many transwomen are still regularly taken to, processed, and housed at Mens Central Jail.
2) The Hate Groups.
I could’ve just lumped them with the folks above because…..you know:
Several well-known players, who are stars both on the January 6 and local terrorism fronts, maintain very friendly relations Los Angeles police officers. Relationships that have granted them permission to discuss kettle strategy with cops, visibly carry banned bear spray at protests, escalate, incite, and advance across safety gaps without police intervention, and, as you saw in multiple videos from this past weekend, to openly assault two women within inches of an officer and escape without arrest.
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Runner Up: Progressive Politics
Listen, Gaga and Miley aren’t coming down to speak at these school board meetings. They’re not even calling into public comment. But, progressives like former mayoral candidate Gina Viola and current congressional candidate Maebe A. Girl are. Remember, this is Hollywood. When you read the news and see the photos of the defense, the presence or support, just remember who you don’t see.
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Also, while Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-43), isn’t technically progressive, her adamance, clarity, and blackness triggers so many people and I just love her for that.
The Winner: Mariah Carey
I feel like I’ve outed myself as a lamb before, right? I know I talked about the commercialization of Pride earlier, but please know I am not talking about her. Today is Thursday. She’s not performing until Saturday. But I know she’ll just simply… 🦋.