This Sunday, June 28, marks 57 years since the Stonewall Uprising and the symbolic birth of the modern gay liberation movement. Every year since then, Pride marches, parades, and other celebrations have been held on the last weekend in June to commemorate the occasion. In New York City, the “official” parade, organized by the nonprofit Heritage of Pride, has become increasingly corporatized, as a regime of progressive neoliberalism found space for a sanitized formation of gay rights, a new homonormativity.
Since 2019, the primary counter event is the Queer Liberation March (QLM), organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition. Every year, QLM has a theme responding to the political demands of the moment — like QLM for Black Lives Against Police Brutality (2020) and Against War and Genocide (2024). This year’s theme, Breaking the Chains of War and Oppression for Trans and Immigrant Rights, acknowledges that the struggle for LGBTQ+ liberation is intimately tied to the fight against imperialism and ICE. After all, the same hand that oppresses us in the United States is the one that oppresses our class siblings and murders them with impunity in places like Iran and Palestine.
Growing Attacks by Trump and the Right
Since last Pride, the Trump administration and state and local governments across the country have expanded their attacks on queer people in general and trans people in particular, threatening to withhold funding from institutions that provide youth gender affirming care, restricting LGBTQ+ content in schools, and forcing institutions to impose discriminatory policies against students, patients, and other community members. Thirty-three anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been passed into law in the first six months of 2026 alone, and another 164 are still under consideration by government bodies.
Trans people are scapegoated as violent criminals and viewed as threats to traditional family structures, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. As attacks on immigrants have increased over the past year, queer immigrants are regularly victims of transphobic and homophobic harassment and violence in ICE detention. Trans people, and trans people of color in particular, are disproportionately victims of violent hate crimes compared to lesbian and gay people.
No Liberation Under Capitalism
Capitalism, an exploitative economic system, will always create conditions for discrimination and prejudice to thrive. It functions on scarcity, inequitable distribution, and the very real risk of not having one’s needs met. In such conditions, some people are viewed as more deserving than others, and it’s in the ruling class’s best interest to foment divisions. This is why the state encourages various groups to blame people of color, immigrants, queer people, and other marginalized communities for their suffering, rather than blame a system that relies on taking as much as possible while giving as little as possible back.
Companies that once bedecked their logos in rainbows for Pride are keeping their usual colors this June. Their support was always contingent on perceived public opinion and fear of political backlash, as LGBTQ+ Starbucks workers well know. And as they watch Trump and the Far Right try to defund trans healthcare and normalize the attacks and dehumanization of trans people, many of these companies have dropped any facade of caring for these communities.
At the same time, the liberal feminism and rainbow capitalism championed by the Democratic Party during neoliberalism is breaking down. The revelations of the Epstein Files showed that Democrats and Republicans will protect their own even as they abuse working-class women and oppressed people. Amid this profound failure of capitalist “feminism,” we must fight for a truly liberatory, socialist feminist movement, one that unites working class women and queer people internationally against those who exploit and oppress us.
Fighting for Queer Rights, Against War and Imperialism
As we have done every year since our inception, Left Voice will be marching in the Queer Liberation March, alongside the many other unions, socialist organizations, queer community groups, and individuals.
Our banners call for workers to unite to defend trans rights, for all queer people to fight against imperialism, the Right, and capitalism, and to look to the ongoing class struggle in Bolivia as both an inspiration for what is possible and a warning for how class collaboration can undermine radical processes.
As the Right attacks LGBTQ+ people in the United States and abroad, the answer is to unite our struggles, showing solidarity with workers and oppressed people everywhere and fighting the capitalist system that divides us. March with us!
The post At This Year’s Queer Liberation March, Unite To Defend Trans Rights and Oppose Imperialist War appeared first on Left Voice.
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