It’s always amusing when leftists eat their own.
The latest example came on Saturday, when activists from a group called No Justice, No Pride, shouting, “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. These racist cops have got to go,” blocked and stopped a gay pride parade in Washington D.C. Some of the activists who had been shouting “Black Lives Matter” chained themselves together using cables and locks to connect themselves across the route so that police could not remove them:
The protesters had another chant: “We are unstoppable. Another world is possible.”
The No Justice, No Pride group issued a press release in which they stated, “DC’s queer and trans community is no longer willing to accept that Pride isn’t possible without support from deeply problematic corporate sponsors.” The group slammed the Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes the annual parade, saying it “has consistently demonstrated that it is more interested in accommodating the interests of Metropolitan police and of corporate sponsors than it is in supporting the very communities it supposedly represents.” The group demanded Capital Pride “bar corporate entities that inflict harm on historically marginalized LGBTQ2S people from participation in Pride events” and created a petition urging Capital Pride to “break ties” with “police, prisons and pipelines.” The parade was rerouted; no arrests were made, according to Washington’s Metropolitan Police Chief Peter Newsham.
The Capital Pride Alliance protested weakly:
Capital Pride always has and will continue to respect the wide range of diversity — of people and viewpoints — within the LGBTQ+ community. Following the disruption of the parade by protesters, we were able to divert the parade from its scheduled route, thus ensuring that as many people as possible could watch the parade in its entirety. We are troubled by reports that some onlookers responded to the protesters with verbal and physical harassment. We encourage a robust, civil, and healthy conversation within the community about all of the issues that impact us and look forward to having a mutually respectful conversation in the days, weeks, and months ahead. The issues raised are of importance to our entire community, across organizations and to our entire movement. In these challenging times for LGBTQ+ people Capital Pride will continue to focus on how we can all move forward as a community striving for equal treatment and respect for all.
The Washington Post noted that the parade “featured community groups, drag queens, plenty of dogs and nearly 200 floats.” The Post added, “The disruption upset paradegoers, who yelled back to the protesters, ‘Shame! Shame!’ ‘I fought for 20 years for this, and now you’re going to ruin the parade,’ one man said.”
There goes all the fun.