Maybe Pride should become a Protest again. Justice for Tony McDade.

11 min readJun 14, 2020

NOTE: This article was written in response to the recent turn of events regarding CSW Pride’s announcement last Wednesday June 3 to have a solidarity march on June 14 in Hollywood in honor of the Black community and to honor the legacies of Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera and the Stonewall uprising. (I picked these words from their official announcement in my email inbox, I noticed no mention directly of Black Lives Matter or George Floyd, nor of Black transgender man Tony Mc Dade.)

And to express my thoughts on the response of the City of West Hollywood to reroute the protest last Tuesday June 2 through blocking the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd and La Brea Ave, the border between Hollywood and West Hollywood, with heavy National Guard and LAPD presence.

I’m writing this article as an individual and not on behalf of any organization, and I’m writing this as an LGBTQ person who is bi-racial (white and Asian) and someone who has dealt with racial profiling by the police myself. Racism is contextual and geographical, as I invariably get racially profiled as Hispanic. I know this by the stereotypes thrown into the line of questioning and the racebox on any citation checked off by police as Hispanic exactly. I immigrated from the Netherlands to the US on an international student visa in 1992, (in the aftermath of the Rodney King non-verdict and rebellion,) after being accepted into Film School in Los Angeles. I identify as trans-masculine, gender nonconforming and lesbian. And I was homeless in Hollywood and West Hollywood from 2003 through 2010.

The turn of events went something like this.

On Tuesday June 2, after several days of protests in Los Angeles had been heavily policed, and some looting and police brutality had ensued in the Fairfax District and Santa Monica, a peaceful protest marching west on Santa Monica Blvd into West Hollywood, and well before Curfew still, got rerouted by police and guards on the the above mentioned intersection.

The march turned right onto La Brea Ave, instead of continuing straight on Santa Monica Blvd, and back into Hollywood where they had originally started. Once again, the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd and La Brea Avenue is on the official border between Hollywood and West Hollywood. With protests and police involvement especially the distinctions between the different cities or districts are important to make, as different police departments handle different districts, and according to the supposed needs of each specific city or district.

As a longtime local of both Hollywood and West Hollywood, and having spent decades here in various financial states myself, I came to know that the intersection of La Brea Ave and Santa Monica Blvd is pretty one of the last stops for Black and Brown, oftentimes homeless, transgender women, and that they are simply not welcome beyond that point, while the rest of the LGBTQ community happily shops at the Target store in the Gateway mall there and heads back West to their insulated town of West Hollywood. There is often police presence on that corner by the Gateway shopping area in general, just one police car parked by Starbucks usually.

(And to put things into somewhat larger historical context, the right to peacefully protest is a Constitutional right under the First Amendment of freedom of speech, while curfews have the racist history of having been instated to stop slave rebellions exactly. A town where only white people could go out at night was referred to as a “sundown town.” I am well aware that the Constitution itself is a complicated document in light of slavery to say the least but this would still make curfews unconstitutional in 2020. And this would make the excuse to arrest people for unlawful assembly because of a curfew nothing but an excuse exactly, and not a valid reason to make arrests at all. And so these curfews last week were especially instated to be able to have a reason to arrest protesters, unlawful assembly after curfew time.)

And then last Wednesday, June 3, just one day after that rerouting by National Guard and police, a more or less impromptu LGBTQ protest march happened, named “LGBTQ+ for Black Lives Matter,” starting in West Hollywood and towards Hollywood.

A march by the LGBTQ community somehow, but not officially organized through Pride, and in solidarity with Black Lives Matter but also without their official involvement. (In some comment section someone mentioned the involvement of James Duke Mason, the grandson of James Mason who ran for West Hollywood City Council last year.

And on Wednesday as well the sudden announcement from CSW Pride to hold a protest march on June 14 in solidarity with the Black community.

The route, in simulation of the very first LA Pride in 1970, would have started at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, and was to end at the police station at San Vicente and Santa Blvd. so starting in Hollywood and going towards West Hollywood, just as the original Tuesday march had intended exactly but was stopped from doing.

Just days after that original announcement by Pride surfaced it became clear that it was also without the involvement or endorsement of the Black Lives Matter organization itself, just as the Wednesday protest had been been.

Did most of the people marching on Wednesday even know about Black transgender man Tony McDade, who got killed by the police just two days after George Floyd?

I didn’t see his name prominently displayed at all, I didn’t hear people say his name, and I didn’t see any rainbow flags with Black and Brown stripes, nor hardly any Transgender flags in general.

But I pick up on enough signals in general and spotted too many American flags at certain corners to suspect this sudden march was mostly a cover up for the previous march being rerouted, specifically to prevent looting and to discourage the general presence of Black and Brown people in West Hollywood.

Just as I see enough signs to come to the conclusion that CSW Pride and the City of West Hollywood are only trying to save their own “minority image” during the all powerful Black Lives Matter protests.

And then the Pride protest itself got quickly cancelled again, citing a lack of permit as the reason. As a quick side note, real protests as peaceful assemblies do not technically need permits, if they do not block traffic or cause any real disturbances. It’s because Pride became a Parade and grew really popular that it officially became a “special event” and started needing police and city permits.

And this is the Latest Update: All Black Lives Matter protest June 14

A Protest March called All Black Lives Matter will start in Hollywood, on Hollywood and Highland on Sunday June 14 at 11 AM, to end on San Vicente Blvd in West Hollywood. This is organized by the Black LGBTQ community, without the involvement of LA Pride, nor of the LAPD.

The moment I put together the connections between the initial rerouting of the Tuesday protest, the spontaneous protest on Wednesday, the announcement and cancellation and the lack of reaching out to any representatives for Black Lives Matter on any of this it became apparent to me that maybe that supposed “Solidarity March” should become its’ own Black and Brown and LGBTQ day of Protest.

A real protest on maybe that exact date of June 14 and on that location in Hollywood. And without the involvement of Pride altogether. But I did’t feel it was within my proper space to really call this out, and wasn’t really sure on how to go about it, so decided on this article instead.

But this is apparently is exactly what is about to happen tomorrow either way because of course the Black LGBTQ community must have seen this coming from a mile away and quickly got on it themselves.

The march is called All Black Lives Matter and I’m sincerely hoping this can become its’ own annual tradition.

Christopher Street West Pride has since apologized and is said to supposedly march as well. The official organizers however have absolutely not involved Pride in this, and it should definitely stay this way.

I’m personally looking forward to see how this will all turn out tomorrow.

Do not forget to bring your face wear for COVID-19 safety measures.

And I still believe Pride should become a Protest again.

Final Thoughts

I needed some time to process my thoughts on all of this, and also did not want to distract from the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and systemic racism and the final services held for George Floyd before bringing the LGBTQ angle into the picture.

However, I do believe we should pay the same amount of attention, or in fact even more, to LGBTQ Black victims of systemic racism and police brutality as we do to cisgender and heterosexual Black people, because people with more inter-sectioning identities are way more marginalized and their narratives more easily erased, their rights more easily violated and their abusers more often left unaccountable.

Racial minorities who are also LGBTQ live at the intersections of systemic racism and sexism and homophobia/ transphobia, and if it took practically a whole world to come together in protest to get at least some justice for a Black cisgender man like George Floyd by holding his murderers accountable and push for police reform, then think about what abusers and murderers of Black and Brown LGBTQ people have been getting away with for decades?

Unfortunately the lived experiences of LGBTQ Black and Brown people are still too complex or unimportant for the mainstream media to report on properly and sufficiently in 2020, and so the name of recently murdered Black transgender man Tony McDade has been very much overshadowed by the narratives of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.

Just as Breonna Taylor’s narrative as a Black person who happens to also be a woman has been somewhat overshadowed so far, because of the inter sectioning identities of vein Black and a woman and so living at the crossroads of racism and sexism combined, and this despite the insane circumstances of her murder by Kentucky police with a so called “no knock warrant.”

A “no knock warrant.” And the practice of this is now being reformed through the new “Breonna Law,” just as the cutting off blood circulation through chokehold type of practices after the death of George Floyd.

Tony McDade, a Black transgender man, was murdered on May 27 by Tallahassee police who have not been held accountable yet, and who’s identities have not been released to the media as of yet, protected by some Florida law. So let us also not forget to say his name, and especially in light of how important properly gendered names are to transgender and gender nonconforming people.

I obviously cannot speak for the experiences of Black people but I do know this about transgender and gender nonconforming people; we do not want to be mis-gendered in our lives nor in our deaths, and we do not want our lives and deaths erased by prejudices and misunderstandings of our gender identities. We need our pronouns and our self-chosen names and our lived experiences to be respected. And we need our abusers and murderers to be held accountable.

And this is a super important point to make; please also note that because our gender identities are not respected and often not recognized by authorities, as well as not understood by the media and society alike, this can also actually seriously change the nature and course of any police investigations themselves. I know they would certainly attempt to mis-gender me upon my death, as they have for 47 years, but even though I have no real need to medically transition I know and have always known that I am most definitely trans-masculine, even if there were no words for describing my innate sense of gender as masculine when growing up.

Whether we are aware of it or not, just about everything in society is gendered, biologically or culturally, and the way police perceives “criminals” and victims is no exception. The authorities are very much complicit in reenforcing the gender-binary as the legal norm, as a system of oppression, and a long history of policing gender and gender identity exists within LGBTQ history itself because of it.

So Say His Name. Justice for Tony McDade. Black Lives Matter.

On a final note, and exactly because of LGBTQ and Black and Brown communities’ inter-sectioning identities, it is important for people to know that on these very streets where a lot of the Hollywood protest marches took place over the last couple of days plenty of people live the struggle of being LGBTQ and Black everyday, and most often women, and many of them homeless, because of systemic racism and sexism exactly.

As a longtime local I have been witnessing homeless Black and Brown transgender and gender nonconforming people’s day to day realities for decades now and I really hope that the people who organize and march on these streets in Hollywood actually take the time to recognize their harsh realities.

(A Black LGBTQ homeless youth was murdered on Sunset and Vine in December of 2018, Jonathan Hart AKA Sky Young, is how they were identified in the media.)

Los Angeles, and particularly Hollywood, being its’ own unique sort of city altogether, as an entertainment industry town, offers a haven of sorts for many different kinds of people who might feel displaced and not fitting neatly into society, and has always attracted a great many LGBTQ people of all races, here to chase their dreams or just be who they need to be. Transgender and gender nonconforming people from all over the US and beyond, from oftentimes ultra-conservative or abusive backgrounds, will move here just to have access to its’ various LGBT Centers.

So if you’re LGBTQ and you stand with Black Lives Matter, then you should really stand with all Black people, facing racism and police brutality. That’s Black (and all racial minorities) cisgender men, and women, and transgender and gender nonconforming people, of all sexual orientations.

Let’s please not forget our LGBTQ history, and our struggle for equality, which is long from over, and let us never use our LGBTQ Pride to ride on, and override, the struggles of racial or other minorities.

BTW, most individual LGBTQ protesters I have seen in the last couple of days in Hollywood have been very respectful and seem highly aware of our common struggles and I have seen them risk their safety and their lives for them. I’m thankful for those representatives and allies of the LGBTQ community.

It’s really the attitude of the City of West Hollywood and CSW Pride that I take issue with, and the people who support tone-deaf or straight-out false protesting.

For the LGBTQ community in West Hollywood in particular to be so foolishly elitist to see their own historic struggle against inequality completely devolve into the big corporately sponsored party that it really has become will ultimately be our own undoing as a minority group as well.

If you don’t remember and honor your history and your struggles you will end up losing your rights and your lives eventually, because you can’t fight injustice if you don’t understand what’s at stake.

Thank you for reading,

Gabriella Orlando Bregman

(they/them)

Brief Bio