PEOPLE'S PRIDE: MANIFESTO!

People's Pride Kansas City was started out of a desire to celebrate queer community without the presence of cops or corporations co-opting our movement. As activists and organizers we know that the entrenched power structures that rule our world will never give us our rights. As queer people, we have always taken our rights by force, by working together and by rejecting the systems that seek to control and exploit us. Queer Pride as an event began as a protest and celebration after the Stonewall Riots in 1969, where a group of queer and trans people, predominately black and brown skinned, many of whom were poor, worked as sex workers and struggled with housing insecurity, collectively stood up to police oppression and fought back against the systemic violence that they experienced. Though we have made some progress in the decades since, we can see clearly how anti-queer forces in our world remain powerful and are still determined to take our rights away. We must stand against our oppression, and the oppression of all people around the world. Queer Pride as an event must be a part of this struggle or it risks becoming part of the problem. People's Pride is a radical, grassroots, DIY celebration of queer resilience, with no cops and no corporations.

NO COPS!

Queer Pride as a tradition began with a riot against police brutality against the community. The cops have always been one arm of enforcement of anti-gay and anti-trans laws and extralegal morality, using violence and coercion to suppress and oppress us. They also act brutally against black, brown, migrant, homeless, poor, disabled, neurodivergent and otherwise marginalized communities. The police have no place at pride, period. Carceral ideas of justice also have no place at pride; we ask that everyone confront the cop in their own heads and commit to creating radical, transformative space for healing. People's Pride stands against oppression to create policeless spaces in which we can all thrive without judgement!

NO CORPORATIONS!

Queer Pride is what we feel when we come together to defend our rights and create a better world. Pride is not an ad campaign or brand identity that can be sold to us in cheap plastic. Corporations cannot represent community while they destroy the world and consolidate wealth and power, bleeding the people dry for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy. Corporations are anti-democratic oligarchies that manipulate social trends for profit. They have hurt queer people much more than they could ever possibly help us and will always choose profits over our rights and our lives. Making rainbows in sweatshops does not make them our allies; corporations have no place at pride! People's Pride creates space for local, independent, ethical, queer owned businesses, artists, and organizations. We believe in community, acting locally, and supporting the people who make things.

FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE!

People's Pride is an ever changing, undefined, open-to-interpretation concept. WE DO NOT OWN PEOPLES PRIDE. If you want to be a part of this, you can reach out to the organizers or make your own! People's Pride is FOR and BY the queer community.