From social injustice comes dissatisfaction, and from dissatisfaction comes popular demand. Popular demand, then, can lead to uprisings.
We can detect this simple reasoning among the riots that we are reading about nowadays. After the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Afro-American community is now rising to gain equality within the US society. Black people are not the only one protesting, though. The international community is also supporting them, trying to start a process that would lead to the elimination of discrimination. This phenomena is becoming global and could become history-changing per se, but it is also happening during the anniversary of another turning-point event: the Stonewall Riots.
The Stonewall Riots
During the 50s and the 60s, Homosexuals were still persecuted in the United States. If caught, they could receive fines and even been imprisoned. They could only meet in secret, and that usually happened in some clubs and bars. One of it, the Stonewall Inn, let gay people inside. The mafia owned the building where the bar was. They corrupted the police for not checking on their customers. As a result, though, they were inflating prices and extorting money from wealthier clients. Gays and transgender people, though, still had to face constant troubles with the police.
This tense situation, though, reached its peak on June 28th, 1969. The police did a raid at the Stonewall, but this time they faced a completely different response from the customers. They opposed the arrest and changed LGBT history. From that moment on, in fact, gay people stopped being silent, and a liberation front took shape. What we are living today recalls those events: from a breaking point, a whole liberation movement raised. After 1969, LGBT people managed to gain rights and better conditions among society. Hopefully, the same thing will happen soon with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Pride in times of CoVid
In 1970, in June, exactly one year after the Stonewall incident, the Gay Liberation Movement held the first Pride. For this reason, traditionally Pride celebrations take place in June and, from 1999, June is officially Pride Month. This year, for the first time, most of the traditional street parades have been cancelled because of the CoVid pandemic. Nonetheless, many Pride committees are still organizing online events. On June 27th, on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the first online Global Pride will take place. Starting from 8 am (Greek Time), the organizers will broadcast a Livestream for 24 hours. Several organizations from all around the world will take part in the first online Pride in history. You can find the schedule for Global Pride on their Website.
As it often happens when an innovation is introduced, there are conflicting opinions regarding the Online version of Pride. Will it be a chance to reach countries that forbid public demonstration for LGBT rights or it will lead to Speech Hate online? (You can read more about it here). Anyway, supporting the LGBTQIA+ (and any other minority) is more important today than ever, since they were within the most affected from the pandemic.
