A troubling sign of the times has been watching organizations abandon their declarations of BLM and DEI to maintain their privilege in the newly emboldened corporate-government alignment.
It’s leaving some lefties wondering, where did the revolution go?
Rest assured folks, revolutionary consciousness is making a comeback, and LGBTQIA2S+ are leading the way.
A brand new organization has just formed in Sonoma County called Petaluma People’s Pride. It is “a grassroots collective working to build intersectional networks that foster connection and center trans, BIPOC, queer, disabled, and other historically silenced people and communities,” according to its mission statement. That’s right; when we talk about supporting marginalized communities, guess what? We have to listen to them, even when it might be hard to hear.
“We definitely want to not be capitalistic in our approach, but more so to go back to the history of where Pride came from and how it should be represented in 2025,” said Chantavy Tornado in a Zoom call with organizers of the group.
“Whatever you identify as, [Pride] is a radical resistance, and how [our group] approaches that is by creating celebration and joy and by who we uplift,” they said.
“Petaluma People’s Pride is a rebirth of queer inclusion, and that inclusion, because it’s radical, is inclusive of everyone,” said Marcos Ramirez.
“We are creating this radically inclusive space as a response to the need for that space,” said Chrystal Sunshine. Actually needs get met only “when you center voices from the representative community in a grassroots manner.”
A longtime leader in the LGBTQ community in Sonoma County, Hanan Huneidi said of the difficulties in local queer activism: “First and foremost, there is a racial division, but it’s also political. That’s the [current] division between radicals and folks who really are privileged.”
An example Huneidi gave was inclusive interpretation. In past efforts to get Spanish interpretation into Pride events, she was told that Spanish speakers need to take care of their own needs. It reminds this writer of Margaret Thatcher’s bold libertarian claim that “there is no such thing as society.”
Instead, Petaluma People’s Pride’s events will have Spanish and ASL interpretation, a pretty simple way to model true inclusion.
“We are a radical movement of truth-telling and grief,” said Tornado. “There is no pacifying the LGBTQ rights movement right now, and there can’t be any pacifying.”
