Less than a year after we have established this organization, we have successfully organized an upcoming rally in Eugene, Oregon to mark Pride Month of 2024 with a protest against pinkwashing. This marks our start at organizing in the streets among our siblings in person. Plenty of organizations around the country are celebrating pride with “pride festivals” or “pride marches” that don’t have much political nature to them, and instead amount to corporate-run, liberal-led, police-escorted, capitalist pride events that do little to advocate for fundamental political change for LGBT+ people or anyone else. There’s also plenty of radical alternatives to pride that carry a variety of left-wing political messaging with them.
The Peoples LGBT+ United Society (PLUS) wanted to have a Pride event that was political but also accessible to the working class and spoke up against pinkwashing especially at a time when it is being invoked by Zionists carrying out a genocide in Palestine to justify their crimes. Our National Director, Kamryn Stringfield – who resides in Eugene, OR – got to work at the beginning of June to organize a rally and helped to build an impressive coalition of over a dozen supporting local organizations behind this for a wide showing of solidarity.
Supporting organizations/coalitions at this time are Springfield Eugene Anti-Imperialist Coalition (SEAIC), Eugene chapters of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Pacific Green Party (PGP), Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), and Veterans for Peace (VFP), University of Oregon chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP UO), Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (UO FSJP), Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP UO) and Young Democratic Socialists of America (UO YDSA), Eugene Healthcare Workers for Palestine, Planet vs Pentagon (PvP), and Coffee Revolution Eugene.
The rally will take place at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza in front of the Lane County Courthouse on 8th Ave at 2:00 pm PDT to 4:00 pm PDT and will include speeches from Kamryn Stringfield and representatives of PGP, PSL and JVP UO. (By the way, if you didn’t know, Wayne Morse was one of 2 US Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution during the Vietnam War). We invite attendees to bring signs and flags related to the LGBT+ struggle and the Palestinian struggle. We also highly recommend that our attendees wear face masks.
Pictures and videos will be taken at the event and we will report to all of our members across the country when it is over! We are also going out to Pride Events all across the country this month and throughout the summer! We just gave out brochures at Grants Pass Pride in rural Josephine County, Oregon and are preparing to attend events in California, New York, Oregon and Washington!