By Madison Wong, Thunderbolt Editor
This June marks the 50th annual Pride Month, a time for members of the LGBTQ+ community to come together and celebrate having the freedom to be themselves. The celebration is rooted in the Stonewall riot in June of 1969 when a group of LGBTQ+ community members in New York protested a police raid in a gay bar. This event sparked the gay liberation movement in efforts to gain equal rights and has been commemorated every year since 1967.
Pride Month is often celebrated with picnics, parties, workshops, concerts, and the most well-known, parades. San Francisco’s 2019 Pride Parade was estimated to have 50,000 people, filling the streets with large crowds dressed in rainbow clothing and glitter body paint. With the outbreak of COVID-19, however, many traditional pride celebrations have been altered due to social distancing efforts. Many big cities, including Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco hosted virtual parades, rallies, and celebrations. San Francisco’s celebration on June 28 consisted of performances by LGBTQ+ community members, including Big Freedia and Betty Who. However, this year is especially different with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
People are using this month to not only educate themselves about the inequalities that the LGBTQ+ community face, but also the struggles of the black community. Many members of the LGBTQ+ community have voiced that they will be spending the month protesting and fighting for the equal rights of the black community, recognizing that the Stonewall riot, the catalyst of their celebratory month, was organized by a transgender woman of color. Over 100 LGBTQ+ organizations have signed an open letter condemning racial violence: “We understand what it means to rise up and push back against a culture that tells us we are less than, that our lives don’t matter. Today, we join together again to say #BlackLivesMatter and commit ourselves to the action those words require.”
Those who belong in both the black and LGBTQ+ communities often have a different story. For example, the life expectancy for a transgender woman of color is 35 years old; to put that into perspective, the life expectancy for females is around 74 and 70 for that of males. This number is so low due to the alarming rate at which transgender women of color are being murdered. Both the black and LGBTQ+ communities have worked together to raise awareness about such issues, which is the start of any positive change.
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