RECLAIM PRIDE COALITION
Accountability Statement and Commitment to Anti-Racist Organizing
June 24, 2021
In advance of the third annual Queer Liberation March on Sunday, June 27, 2021 the Reclaim Pride Coalition would like to update community members on the state of our organization. The Reclaim Pride Coalition is a volunteer-run group of trans, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, intersex, asexual, Two-Spirit, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people (LGBTQIA2S+) who are publicly committed to queer liberation. However, the internal functioning of the group has not lived up to our goals and ideals.
The Reclaim Pride Coalition has not done enough to combat repeated instances of structural racism and individual racist acts within our organization. This has resulted in a hostile environment for many Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) who have worked on the Queer Liberation March and shared their experiences in our group. Our goal with this statement is to be transparent with the community and to hold ourselves publicly accountable for failing to be in solidarity with Coalition members of color. This is one step in RPC’s commitment to transforming the Coalition. Over the next six months, our goal is to focus on anti-racist education as well as creating an organizational structure to make room for transparency and accountability for all of our members.
The Harm Done
Those of us who have been complicit in, witnessed, or have been unconscious of the harm that has happened in the Reclaim Pride Coalition are deeply sorry. We apologize that it has taken the pain of BIPOC within our community, and multiple reports of harm, to force a change in behavior. We recognize that apologizing is not enough, and we are committed to a course of action that includes personal and organizational work.
Throughout the three years that the Reclaim Pride Coalition has organized the Queer Liberation March, a majority of our organizing members have been white. Coalition members of color have done invaluable work organizing each one of our marches, but many of them have been mistreated and/or tokenized by their fellow organizers. Micro-aggressions from white members have gone unaddressed. When organizers of color were the targets of racist statements, white members often did not speak up on their behalf or hold each other accountable for their actions. Trans people of color have been particularly vulnerable, and have expressed discomfort working within this coalition. In the last three years, many members of color have chosen to leave the Coalition or become less active because of the oppression they faced. These issues have come to a head during the lead-up to the 2021 QLM.
Structural and individual racism is present in our space. Every organizer brings internalized biases to this work, and many of us have brought organizing strategies that are not working for communities of color. This has resulted in an organizational structure which is not anti-racist and not anti-oppressive. While the Coalition aims to have a flat power structure, that has translated to a lack of structure. We therefore lack organization, shared responsibility, and transparency. When anti-racist structures are not made explicit, organizations mirror the status quo of white supremacy. This situation harms us all. Currently, because little support is offered within RPC, those who feel comfortable staying tend to have experience in mostly white spaces. These organizers take on responsibility, gain institutional knowledge, and ultimately accrue social power. There is then no structural way for them to share their knowledge or resources with folks who have not had access, and so marginalized organizers don’t have the ability to share in that power. This is the cycle we aim to break by developing a liberatory structure and anti-oppressive practices within the coalition.
These ongoing issues have been exacerbated by recent events. On Monday, June 14, a meeting was held between representatives from the Rally Committee, representatives from the Washington Square Park (WSP) Conservancy, and representatives from the mayor’s office; an NYPD officer was also present. This meeting demonstrated that it would be impossible to host a permitted Rally at WSP without communicating with the police, as representatives from WSP shared our planning materials with the NYPD.
At a subsequent debrief, different interpretations of our "No Cops" promise became apparent and came into conflict. Namely, some members insisted that absolutely no contact with police should be made under any circumstances, and other members believed that the consent of the Parks Department (and consequently the NYPD) would be necessary to hold a rally of the scale our coalition had proposed. In 2019, RPC members negotiated with police for the Queer Liberation March and Rally, which did not receive an official permit from the city. In 2020, RPC ultimately chose not to negotiate with the NYPD or pursue a permit for the March. This conflict over our 2021 Rally highlighted severe points of division in our organization and was brought to RPC’s General Body Meeting on Wednesday, June 16. The General Body voted to reorganize our Rally to prevent further contact with the police, ultimately leading to the Rally’s cancellation. The harm done to RPC members during these discussions remains an issue.
In the last few weeks, several organizers of color have chosen to stop organizing with RPC. Coalition members of color have also pointed out the ways that they’ve been tokenized and pushed to be the public face of our Coalition. By making BIPOC hyper-visible, we exposed them to racist resentment with no plan to protect them from it. The Reclaim Pride Coalition created a gap between our public presentation and our internal behavior. We are determined to close that gap, and to be as transparent as possible as we move forward in that process. We have chosen to write this without using names or referring to specific incidents. Details will only be shared with the consent of those involved.
Moving Forward
RPC’s community accountability process began in a meeting on Wednesday, June 23, when we determined our shared goals for moving forward as a Coalition. The planned timeline for our initial restructuring is between now and January of 2022. In the next six months, we will begin the work of internal education and restructuring. This will require us to collaboratively unlearn oppressive beliefs, whether they be racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, ageism, or classism. We will work together to analyze what has and has not worked within our organization and to heal the harm we have caused. Of course, this education would be incomplete without action. We will also develop concrete, anti-oppressive practices and a new organizational structure for RPC, including support for community members who join the Coalition in the future. We will create and implement strategies for addressing racism and other harmful incidents within RPC when they occur, and we will strengthen the community-building and accountability efforts that are integral to our fight for collective liberation.
Our Coalition is collaborating on ways to move forward, which include:
Clarification of how RPC’s "no cops" promise is operationalized in potential interactions with other city officials
Commitment to ongoing anti-racism education and skill-building, led by radical educators of color with appropriate compensation for labor
Development and implementation of clear onboarding processes for new members
Clarification and more specific delineation of responsibilities within the Coalition
Development of clear processes for addressing instances and patterns of harm
The wider LGBTQIA2S+ community will be regularly updated on this process as we move through it together.
Ultimately, the beauty and value of the Queer Liberation March doesn’t come from Reclaim Pride, but from the tens of thousands of people marching in it. As marchers, you set the standard for our community, and our organization has not consistently met that standard. As organizers we will continue to learn from our community’s example this Sunday. We strive to hold ourselves accountable, to grow, and to truly work for the liberation of all queer people.
Best,
The Reclaim Pride Coalition