The overall scene at Orlando’s Pride parade was as festive as ever. This scene (in the video) was especially nice.
The election though was just two weeks and three days away. Thus, I felt a dark forboding that this could be our LAST peacetime Pride.
Many others may have sensed this, though they reacted differently. Everyone I made conversation with did NOT want to discuss politics.
Eight years minus 15 days ago, I watched the 2016 election results roll in on the big screen TV at a Gay club. One of the first results in was some rural county in the Carolinas, going over 70% for Trump. The feeling we all had was that of sitting in a Berlin Gay club in 1932, watching Hitler get elected.
A small number of fundamentalist Christians showed up at Orlando Pride. They seemed to avoid overt counterdemonstration. They refused to answer question about whether or not they support a return to the police raids on LGBTQ nightlife that the Stonewall Riot (which Pride commemorates) put a stop to.
While Orlando cops DID march in the Pride parade (how does this celebrate Stonewall?), a lot of the visible policing and patrolling at Orlando’s Pride parade was done by out of town cops.
This is NOT seen at Washington DC’s huge Capitol Pride festival, and it seemed that OPD’s actual policing was kept in the background.
This was especially true of their bike cops, who are notorious from their repeated harassment of and assaults on Palestine protesters. This is a guess, but I’m wondering if this is fallout from those incidents?
Also note that most of Lake Eola Park was fenced off, and the post-parade festival took place behind bag search checkpoints. I did not enter the controlled area for the usual reasons.
Protest and direct action against capitalism, imperialism, and fascism
