It Started With A Riot!
Pride Houston 2020 Equality March + Rally
For over forty years, Pride Houston, Inc. has been an institution in Houston’s LGBTQIA+ community. Now, in 2020 it is an institution led by a diverse board of directors and production team. This team, this board, our volunteers, and every member of our community are affected by the racial injustices not only in the abstract, but personally as it continues to happen here in the streets of our own city and beyond. We are vigilantly aware that our own ability to celebrate our Pride and our progress as LGBTQIA+ people cannot be taken for granted when protesters of similar and related movements, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, take to the streets. It is with a determined mind that we at Pride Houston, Inc. have decided that this year’s Pride Celebration will be a rally and march at Houston City Hall on June 27, 2020. We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and to recognize that Pride is not colorblind to the brutality of the world we are living in today.
“The task at hand is not only an issue for Black Lives but for everyone including the LGBTQIA community,” said Shannon Baldwin, Harris County Judge. “Black Lives are entitled to a seat at the table, to eat well and to breathe! Black Lives Matter!”
Pride Houston, Inc. is aware of our responsibility not only to the intersecting Black and Brown people of our community, but also to all Black and Brown people throughout the world. In fact, the very movement that spawned our ability to celebrate Pride and one of our nation’s most notorious displays of protest took place outside the Stonewall Inn fiftyone years ago. The Stonewall Riots were the result of the resilience of the Black LGBTQIA+ community. We thank the many queer and transgender people of color who have led the uphill battle over the decades. It is because of their fearlessness and resilience in the face of such violent adversity and police brutality that we are able to not only celebrate our Pride every June at Stonewall’s anniversary, but to continue our fight for progress every single day of the year.