-Written by Owen Oak
In April of 2016, I attended a city council meeting alongside a few dozen others in support of the movement for community control over the police. A few days prior the police shot a teenager in the Rio Grande Neighborhood. The mayor, whole council, police officials, news media, and community leaders were all present, which was heartening for me and others in the movement. However, before we were able to speak all of these important people spoke enthusiastically in support of renaming 900 South after Harvey Milk. After the council unanimously voted to change the street name, all of these important people stood up, applauded, took pictures, and then left the room. Then myself and a few dozen residents spoke to a disinterested city council with very little coverage.
One man who spoke briefly in support of the change to the street name stayed behind for our agenda section. He spoke about growing up gay in the 90s in Salt Lake City. About leaving clubs and having to avoid the police. He spoke about going to Washington Square and getting in fist fights with Neo-Nazis. He spoke about being afraid to ride the bus, go to concerts, and about how he and his friends got together to defend themselves, and assert their rights. He said that he was happy about the renaming of the street, but insisted that the city cannot ‘give with one hand and take with the other.’
Since then, 900 South has become a major corridor of redevelopment. Police harass and displace homeless people in the neighborhood. Previous community staples are closing, and new, up-classed restaurants are opening in their place. The Ballpark (from which the western portion of the street gets its neighborhood name) is likely being replaced by luxury condos and a shopping mall. Rent on ‘Harvey Milk Blvd’ has increased dramatically over the last 7 years, displacing and impoverishing countless LGBTQ (and non-LGBTQ) working class people. Inauspiciously, most of the businesses and luxury condos on this street fly some variation of the pride flag year-round. There are LGBTQ politicians that openly advocate for these changes, who are in turn supported by these businesses.
LGBTQ people are far more likely to be poor, food insecure, and uninsured than non-LGBTQ people. Rent, wages, healthcare, and housing are the primary material issues facing the majority of LGBTQ people in the city. In this article I am going to make the case that the existing LGBTQ leadership is largely hostile to the majority of the queer community. Then I want to talk about how we can take steps towards building an LGBTQ liberation movement that addresses these questions in a substantial, material (and non-performative) manner.
Why the corporatization of the LGBTQ movement is a problem.
Pride has its origins and growth, even locally, in militancy and grassroots struggle. Unfortunately, the picture of LGBTQ politics today does not reflect this, and spits in the face of this legacy. What we have instead is non-profits, various LGBTQ developers, business owners, and politicians declaring, or at least implying that the new front of struggle revolves around supporting them. All while LGBTQ people face discrimination in the workplace, housing, and face high rates of poverty and violence. Even this ‘prosperity’ accomplished by a stripe of the LGBTQ community tends to be held by well-educated, middle class, cisgender gays and lesbians.
There has been a false unity of interest propagated between working-class LGBTQ people, and wealthy political and industry leaders who happen to be LGBTQ. For all the flags hanging from buildings, very little has been done by this class of ‘leaders’ to uplift working class LGBTQ people. LGBTQ political organizations that organize and fight alongside working-class LGBTQ people quickly discover something; the sharpest manifestations of LGBTQ oppression are economic.
This issue is more than stating ‘this doesn’t affect rich LGBTQ people, so of course they don’t care.’ LGBTQ landlords benefit from the exploitation of LGBTQ tenants, ‘local LGBTQ business owners’ steal tips from their LGBTQ workers. How many LGBTQ people have been displaced on North Temple, 900 south, and in Rose Park by businesses and developers that fly the pride flag year-round?
The corporatization of pride is not just a left-wing aesthetic issue. Capitalist-Liberal LGBTQ leaders have categorically relegated LGBTQ issues to civil legal struggles and ‘vote with your dollar’ politics. This has created a massive gap between ‘lgbtq politics’ and the actual needs of the LGBTQ community. The results of this gap are palpable. On the one hand you have a community living with extreme economic precarity under threat from various bigoted legislative and social forces. On the other are massive, well-funded organizations totally ill-equiped or unwilling to meet these needs.
The vague politics of representation and visibility have done enough to mobilize a far-right hysteria, but done very little to empower (meaning organize) LGBTQ people to withstand the coming reaction. These same politics of representation and visibility have given corrupt politicians, unethical business owners, and developers political cover. But LGBTQ liberation is more than having a pride parade every now and then. It’s about breaking the cycle of oppression and building a society where everyone can be themselves, and building the power to make that a reality.
We need to seperate ourselves from wealthy liberal misleaders.
As a member of Wasatch Tenants United, I have seen time and time again how the rainbow flag is used as cover for some of the most heinous activities in our city. From gentrification, police brutality, and anti-homeless crackdowns. I first got involved in politics when I organized a gay-straight alliance at my school. But now, when I see a rainbow flag, I see a banner of gentrification in my community. This is the result of misleadership, and it doesn’t need to be this way.
Nothing I have said so far will be new to anybody experienced in local LGBTQ politics. However, I have a sharper thesis to push; the mainstream pride movement is not salvageable. The Utah Pride Center, Equality Utah, and the Human Rights Campaign, along with many other local non-profits, rely on the wealthy. We need to politically isolate these groups and leave them to their careerist designs. Further, working class LGBTQ people should instead organize and strengthen grassroots, class-oriented, struggle-centered organizations of their own.
I’m not saying that working class LGBTQ people need to ‘declare war’ on upper class LGBTQ people. Rather, we need to recognize that there is already a war being waged against us. To fly the rainbow flag for policies and practices that harm us is to spit in our faces. My HR department refuses to sign work endorsements for J1 and temp workers, which could mean deportation. In some departments, over half of these workers are LGBTQ. This HR department marched in the pride parade. How many of our elders would have risked their lives and freedom in struggle if they thought this is where it would lead?
We have a need and a responsibility to struggle for something better that has actual teeth, and not settle for this useless aesthetic bullshit. But doing so will mean attracting the ire, derision, and reprimand from the misleaders of our community.
The needs we need to meet that liberal misleaders are not.
Fundamentally, we need to educate, organize, and mobilize our communities to build power that can guarantee certain protections, dignity, and subsistence. Luckily, working-class LGBTQ needs are largely (though not entirely) shared in common with the working class. A union at your workplace will protect all workers, not just queer workers. Rent control and other anti-displacement measures will help whole communities alongside queer people. This means that there is a much larger numerical base to draw from regarding the needs and struggles of the LGBTQ community. Even bigoted working class people tend to soften their bullshit when it becomes apparent that by joining forces with LGBTQ (or other oppressed people) their lives can improve.
Forming class-centered organizations is necessary for the protection and uplifting of the majority of queer (and all) people. However, this will inevitably lead to conflict with wealthy LGBTQ people. For example;
- Tenant unions that protect LGBTQ tenants will eventually have a conflict with LGBTQ property owners.
- Labor unions are a costly thing for a queer business owner to deal with. This is because labor unions get raises for their queer (and non-queer) workers, and interfere with their hiring and firing prerogatives. While this is a very good way to guarantee dignity and stability at work, employers (even LGBTQ employers) are very hostile to labor unions.
- ‘Our’ majority queer community council features prominently at local LGBTQ organizations’ events, but has done an extreme amount of harm to working class people in this city. Community organizations will need to make sure they cannot hide their loyalties to property developers and the project of gentrification behind a rainbow flag.
It is statistically certain that all of these examples of wealthy liberal ‘queer power’ have harmed far more queer people than they have helped. Working-class LGBTQ people organizing for power must do so at the expense of some wealthy segments of the LGBTQ community. This will likely make these misleaders feel disempowered and attacked, and we should expect that they will mobilize their political connections to repress us. If we are reliant on these people for our political organization, then we have already lost. This is why I insist we need separate organization.
All power to the working class
Representation politics have become the main output that mainstream organizations have used to justify their existence. However, representation and visibility works only insofar as the people you are being made visible to are sympathetic. We are seeing today, with the uptick in violent right-wing hysteria, how this can backfire. Violence on the streets is an obvious example, but being homophobic is ‘in style’ right now. This will likely mean more workplace and housing discrimination. The same organizations that loudly wave the bloody shirt whenever our community is attacked (to solicit more donations) do very little to protect us from these kinds of reactions.
Capitalist-Liberal leadership has centered visibility and civic-professionalism over grassroots struggle. This has created a hazardous political and social situation that they have no ability to address. They of course don’t need to address it; they are generally well-insulated professionals well outside the reach of these consequences. They are happy to collect their paychecks and prestige and leave us to reap the whirlwind. But down here, we need to start asking the hard questions of ‘do I need to leave my home to avoid whatever is coming?’ or ‘do you know how to use a gun?’
Power for working class queers, not the fickle good will of an employer, landlord, politician, or public opinion, is what is needed in this moment. Being homophobic should be hazardous. Homophobic businesses should face strikes. Queer politicians who tie their fortunes to our enemies should not know a day of peace. Rainbow flags should be a flag of struggle, not something that subliminally means ‘no public restrooms.’ For that to be a reality requires repeatedly applicable exercises of power by organizations embedded in the working class, not lobbyists and a queer city council. Fundamentally, whatever our working class organizations gain they will need to take from employers, landlords, and politicians. Many of these employers, landlords, and politicians will be queer people. We cannot shy away from the moment and what it demands due to some Stockholm loyalty towards this class of misleaders.
Get Involved!
Locally, there are organizations working hard to embed themselves in their working class communities and advance this need. In these groups you will find many capable and passionate working class queer people on the front lines. All of these groups are active year round, and are a much better use of your time than anything else on offer locally; (There are certainly more, but I am only including those that I have some personal familiarity with.)
Wasatch Tenants United (I am a member, so of course I will mention them first.)
Rose Park Brown Berets
Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid
Armed Queers SLC
Pride Without Police
Anakbayan SLC
Amistad Collective
Contact us and we will help you get started unionizing your workplace.
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