LGBTQ Activists Protest Coporate Influence On Pride

On the day of the Dublin Pride march, thousands lined the streets to support the annual parade. They swung rainbow flags, waved clever posters over their heads and cheered, as massive floats passed by. But the string of smiles that lined sidewalks stopped at a group of solemn individuals glaring at the oncoming floats.

“Queer liberation, not corporations!” the crowd chanted.

A row of demonstrators clutched a large black banner that read “You gave us rights because we gave you riots,” while dozens surrounding them held posters with messages liker “Queer liberation, not rainbow capitalism” and “These corporations don’t care about you,” drawn on them. Together, they chanted their disapproval of the corporate sponsors at the parade. These critics of the direction Pride has taken represent Queer Action Ireland.

Queer Action Ireland’s (QAI), formerly known as Working Class Queeroes, aims to resist the commercialisation of queer identity by corporations, political parties and other vested interests. For the past several years, the group has organised a radical left bloc at the Dublin Pride Parade.

Sam Riggs, a member of QAI, was involved with the parade back in 2017, before joining the activist group. He claimed that he dropped out after witnessing the overwhelming corporate presence and lack of concrete action.

“Dublin pride has really become a show of force for the corporations,” Riggs said. “It’s become a marketing ploy, and a competition, for companies who don’t normally acknowledge marginalised members of the LGBTQ community.”

Of the corporations represented in the parade, QAI mainly targeted Amazon, Smirnoff and Google (owners of YouTube). He remarked that QAI were protesting against the corporations' alleged questionable or hypocritical treatment of workers, and their primary focus on mainstream members of the LGBTQ community.

While YouTube denied these allegations, numerous transgender creators claim to be demonetised due to limitations imposed by the company. These constraints range from blocking advertisements to adding age restrictions on trans-creators’ pages. Meanwhile, a string of articles has surfaced denouncing the working conditions experienced by Amazon employees, including insufficient time for bathroom breaks and lack of available sick days. Smirnoff’s presence was criticised due to statistics from Psychology Today which suggest that LGBTQ youths have a 20 to 30 percent higher chance of falling victim to substance abuse.

Riggs would like to see the corporations take responsibility for less publicised members of the LGBTQ community. He suggested, for example, that AirBnB could contribute funding to research in LGBTQ homeless youths.

QAI hopes to establish its own manifesto, establish achievable goals and organise its own, free, pride event in reclaimed public areas. They hope to create actions that will help a larger range of people in the LGBTQ communtiy.

“Pride has its roots in Protest,” Riggs said. “It should be used as a vehicle for bringing about actionable change.”

DO NOT LET YOUTUBE GET AWAY WITH THIS.

I uploaded my video TWICE to see if the word "transgender" would trigger the algorithm... and every step of the way was fine UNTIL I added the word Transgender. RIGHT away, the video was demonetized.

Literally. RIGHT. AWAY. pic.twitter.com/mvCucFPyZP

— Chase Ross ? (@ChaseRoss) May 30, 2018