We demand that Pride organizations publicly state that they will ban weapons manufacturers from public or monetary participation in Pride. Weapons manufacturers are directly profiting, aiding, and abetting Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people. Building a safer world for all queer and trans people demands that we all rise up against these dealers of death.

• Pinkwashing - Weapons manufacturers sponsor Pride in an attempt to pinkwash their violence. They utilize queer and trans lives to justify the devastation, murder, and genocide that they enable and profit from. Read more on pinkwashing below.

• Exploitation of the LGBTQIA+ community - Allowing weapons manufacturers to sponsor Pride events enables them to exploit the LGBTQIA+ community for their own profit. It reduces Pride to a mere marketing opportunity to rehabilitate their image, disregarding and degrading the struggles and values of the community.

We demand that Pride organizations publicly support the Palestinian people's right to live free from colonial rule in their land, their right to return to their homes, and their right to resist colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide by any means necessary as enshrined in international law.

• Commit to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel - BDS is a movement to pressure Israel to comply with international law. ACT UP NY made a powerful example by endorsing boycott, divestment, and sanctions, and Pride organizations should follow suit. They must endorse BDS and commit to organizing our communities and institutions to divest from institutions inflicting harm on our communities. 

• Reject normalization - According to the BDS National Committee, normalization is “the idea of making occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism seem normal and establishing normal relations with the Israeli regime instead of supporting the struggle led by the Indigenous Palestinian people to end the abnormal conditions and structures of oppression.” Pride must reject normalization and actively advocate alongside queer and trans Palestinians for a Free Palestine.

• Pride was a riot of resistance - Our historical legacy is to fight against the oppressive systems that murdered, imprisoned, humiliated, and erased our queer and trans ancestors. Israel’s oppression is no different.

• Connections between anti-trans and anti-Palestinian legislation - The same playbook is being used by the same people to push anti-trans and anti-Palestinian legislation (read more in this toolkit and Yaffa’s Desecrated Poppies). As such, we must recognize that the Palestinian struggle for liberation is an essential part of our struggle for liberation.

• Redistribute resources and fundraise for queer and trans Palestinians - Having a party? A parade? A kiki? Solidarity without material support is incomplete. Consider moving those material resources into the hands of queer and trans Palestinians most impacted (in Gaza, frontline organizers, care workers etc). Acknowledgement is one thing, support is another.

We demand that Pride organizations publicly condemn Israel’s weaponization of queer and trans lives as justification for the genocide of Palestinians.

• Some context - Israel has spent millions of dollars over the past two decades in a marketing campaign to paint itself as a queer haven, including holding a Pride in Tel Aviv as “evidence” of its liberalism. This campaign villainizes the Palestinian people (and Arab people generally) as homophobic/transphobic and weaponizes the identities of queer and trans Palestinians to blackmail and abuse them.

• Pinkwashing - Pinkwashing is the strategy of weaponizing LGBTQIA+ rights and protections as evidence of liberalism and democracy, and ultimately legitimacy.  This tactic is used by Israel to deflect from or legitimize their violence imposed on Palestinians. For example, an IOF soldier unfurled a pride flag atop rubble in Gaza, claiming, “the first ever pride flag raised in Gaza.” Written on the flag were the words, “In the Name of Love.”

• Homonationalism - Homonationalism is the conflation of LGBTQIA+ rights with nationalistic ideology and the attempt to use LGBTQIA+ rights in an attempt to support neoliberal structures and ideals. Homonationalism hurts the local LGBTQIA+ community because it is based on the premise of erasing local queer and trans issues to fit the narrative that Israel (and the United States) is a safe haven for queer and trans people. After silencing local queer and trans issues to place itself as a safe haven for LBGTQIA+ rights, Israel uses pinkwashing in places like Gaza to justify genocide in the name of furthering LGBTQIA+ rights. But erasing local queer and trans issues and murdering hundreds of thousands of people moves us away from, not towards, liberation.

• Blackmailing queer Palestinians - While framing itself as a haven for queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel frequently blackmails queer Palestinians, forcing them to provide intelligence in exchange for protection (see this new report by the Intercept). This tactic turns queer Palestinian vulnerability into a tool of coercion. This is not new: Israel has a long history of weaponizing queer Palestinians’ sexual identity to blackmail and further marginalize them.

We demand that Pride organizations do the absolute bare minimum by calling for an immediate end to arming Israel.

• Not calling for an arms embargo is an endorsement of genocide - With an estimated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed in a livestreamed genocide, Pride organizers are situating themselves on the wrong side of history by remaining silent while rainbow flags are raised on top of the corpses and rubble of the death camps in Gaza.

• Our lives are being used to justify genocide - In the face of homonationalism and pinkwashing, calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza will save lives and is essential to queer and trans liberation. The genocide, once again, is largely dependent on the erasure of local queer and trans issues to create the illusion of homonationalism. Silence is a statement in support of genocide and the use of our lives to justify it.

• Listen to and stand with the communities you claim to represent - Queer and trans folk from all walks of life have mobilized against the genocide for over two and a half years. Many of them are facing arrest, police brutality, job loss, and expulsions from universities and housing. 60% of Americans want to stop arming Israel—and 75% of Democrats. Youth overwhelmingly support Palestinian liberation. Pride organizations must reflect these stances for an end to the genocide.

We demand Pride organizations cut ties with all corporations that profit off of the further marginalization and desecration of our interconnected communities, including law enforcement, surveillance companies, corporations invested in the prison industrial complex, oil and gas companies, banks invested in weapons, war, and environmental destruction, and other harmful entities that inflict violence on our communities.

• Profiting off of genocide while normalizing it - All industries that profit from war, detention and incarceration, environmental destruction, evictions, and community displacement are profiting off of the same systems that are used to normalize Israel’s violent occupation and perpetuate the genocide of Palestinians.

• Pinkwashing - Yet again, these companies are using Pride as an advertising opportunity, using our lives to justify the harm they cause in our communities.

• None of us are free until all of us are - Not only do these corporations profit off of the killing of Palestinians, but the destruction of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities across the country and world. Our celebrations should be sites of creating the world we deserve—a world free from the exploitation (and genocide!!!) of our people.

We demand that Pride organizations unequivocally stand behind protestors – the majority of whom are Black, brown, Indigenous, queer and trans – and denounce the state violence and surveillance being inflicted on our communities as we fight for the liberation of Palestine.

• Ban the police from marching in Pride and scale back their presence at Pride - We have watched the ways law enforcement has brutalized our communities over the past two and a half years, and since the beginning of policing in this country. Police, and all other law enforcement agencies, have no place in our Pride parades or events. The police do not keep us safe. 

• Reject the surveillance of our communities - The FBI has previously issued a warning indicating that “foreign actors” would pose a threat at Pride. We know that this is a mechanism for the FBI to target protestors and criminalize speaking out against the genocide. Pride must refuse to work with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies against protestors.

• Pride's roots in anti-police brutality protests - Pride began as a protest against police brutality targeting Black and brown queer and trans people. Allowing police to participate in Pride events undermines this historical legacy, disregards the connections between the US militarized police force and the Israeli Occupation Forces, and perpetuates the systemic violence inflicted upon our marginalized communities.