People Against Prisons Aotearoa

There was only one Auckland Pride 2016 and it started on Karangahape Road

On Saturday February 20, hundreds of members of the Auckland queer and trans community erupted onto Ponsonby Road to disrupt an event celebrating institutional and corporate pinkwashing. These dissenting members of the queer and trans community embodied the meaning of Pride. Their rallying, marching, chanting, shouting, and barricading was the only true Pride that night. The other event was co-opted by exploitative corporations and institutions as an advertising opportunity and a public relations stunt.

Auckland Pride 2016 began on Karangahape Road with a cry of “Fuck Pride!”. Those in attendance were proud to reject the corporations and institutions shimmering with glitter on the adjacent street. Pride disrupted traffic as it moved along Karangahape Road towards the gentrified centre of Ponsonby. It flowed towards the barricades protecting banks, universities, and other institutions as they marched with rainbows integrated into their logos and slogans. It broke those barricades with what Pride was always supposed to be and, for some, continues to be: queer anger, from struggling queers. It was spontaneous, uncontrollable, loud, and fundamentally political.

Those hundreds of community members brought the officially endorsed pinkwashing event to a grinding halt for at least an hour. Once that event started back up again with a diverted route, the protesters conducted rolling blockades with the intent of shutting it down. They were the ones displaying pride: enough pride to reject corporatisation and institutional violence.

Those attending the corporate event, like the queer community more generally, were divided. On the one hand, there were those who, realising the purpose of the protest, supported the protesters and cheered them on. The vast majority of attendees, on the other hand, hurled verbal abuse, juice bottles, and sometimes fists at the protesters. They loudly informed the blockaders that they were a disgrace to the community. But the blockaders were not part of the same community as those who booed them from the sidelines. Whereas the blockaders were from a community of marginalised peoples, the booers represented a community that condones institutional violence.

And so there was an event that unquestioningly accepted the oppressive behaviours of police, prisons and corporate pinkwashers, and there was an event that demanded something more of the queer and trans community. But there was only one Pride. It was in the spirit of Pride’s legacy: the spirit of queer struggle, passion, and the rejection of oppressive power. Pride clashed with the officially endorsed corporate event flowing through a wealthy, gentrified suburb. It clashed with exploitative corporations and institutions bedazzled in their superficial support for ‘gay rights.’

So how exactly are these violent institutions and exploitative corporations attempting to pinkwash their behaviour? First, let’s take the example of ANZ, who introduced ‘GayTMs’ for the first time during last year’s Pride. Prior to and during the rollout of the GayTMs, ANZ workers were conducting ongoing strikes against their employer’s attempt to enforce casualised contracts and unlivable wages. Similarly, the University of Auckland marched in this year’s corporate event, hoping we would forget that it does not pay a living wage to all its employees, or guarantee secure contracts. Just like police and Corrections, they tried to excuse their behaviour by co-opting a queer cause without taking on queer issues. These queer issues include the fact that there are queer and transgender workers who are not being paid a living wage by ANZ or UoA. They include the fact that queer and transgender people are being abused by police and corrections officers.

The Auckland Pride Board, which organised the corporate event, is prepared to excuse this behaviour. No Pride in Prisons is not. If we stay silent, we are effectively condoning the actions of institutions like Corrections who would attempt to use a queer event to invite us to forget their consistent human rights abuses. If we accept things as they are, or ask nicely for things to change, nothing will change. Nothing will change as long as privileged members of the community cosy up to those who would use them as a shield from necessary attack. Silence is the enemy of emancipation.

As we now know, there are members of the queer and trans community who are no longer willing to stay silent. No Pride in Prisons activists were willing to put their bodies on the line in order to send a message: “Violence wrapped in a rainbow flag is still violence. Racism covered in glitter is still racism.” They were not willing to accept that those who, on a daily basis, sexually assault prisoners in the form of intrusive and unnecessary strip searches should be allowed to march in the corporate event, while trans women stuck cages are hidden from view.

This rejection of the status quo maintains the spirit of Pride and continues the work of those rioting trans women of colour who demanded freedom of gender identity and sexuality, and an end to sexual violence. However, No Pride in Prisons’ actions do not only re-call a not-too-distant past; they also call-forth a future. The future called-forth is a future in which the indigenous people of this country aren’t being incarcerated at a rate five times that of the colonisers. It is a future in which incarceration is no longer the solution to social issues, and it is a future in which the violent forces of cisheteronormativity do not reign supreme. And so the real Pride event was put on by those calling forth a future without the violence of police and prisons. Theirs was the only Pride 2016.

Written by S Morgan and T Lamusse