Photo by Jordan Resnick.
One city home of two protests. In the center of Washington, DC, gun violence protestors marched for their lives at the Washington Monument. Backed by Washington’s spine reaching higher than a Beretta barrel, bereaved mothers, fathers, schoolmates, and fellow citizens called for reformation in recognition of common sense. Pushing North past the Ellipse – the breathless pause between gun torrent and torment - sits the epicenter of the living celebrating survival.
Capital Pride Parade, DC’s gay pride celebration, sprang into full festivities at 3pm with the arrival of leatherbacked motorcyclists waving rainbow flags. Grizzled and gay, these rough riders rode for their loved ones living and deceased. Some old enough to outlive the Stonewall Revolution, others barely legal to ride. Together they revved their engines and coolly gazed across the crowd celebrating their liberation.
It is in multitudes we survive, in diversity we strive. The parade striding down P Street filled with drag queens, local celebrities, and common folk alike joined together under one shared banner uniting disenfranchised, durable community into a commemoration of life. For one day firemen, postoffice employees, singers, dancers, drummers, lovers can be the hero they’ve always wanted to be.
Peeling back from the crowd, I backtrack towards Dupont Circle in search of my friends. I spot a discarded plastic waterbottle on the ground, grumbling about my new compulsion to clean up waste wherever, wherever I am. Circling the circumference yields an unending flow of trash burgeoning atop black trash bins. Astounded at how a celebration of community in our nation’s capitol there were no places to recycle or a forethought of our future’s health, I begrudgingly place the plastic bottle atop a mound of overflowing trash and catch the eyes of a merchant peddling pride flags.
A black male immigrant in an orange t-shirt, he stands next to a blue cart bursting with all shades of the rainbow. He speaks in an accent I don’t recognize.
“$5 flags! Get your pride flags right here!” I approach and inquire about the merchandise.
“How long have you been out here?”
“Since four this morning.” He says.
“And you’ve been selling that long?”
“Only got started just now.”
“How long do you plan to be out here?”
“About two hours.”
“How many flags do you have?”
“Seven dozen.”
“How much are you hoping to make?”
“Until I sell out.”
I do the math as he continues scanning the crowd.
“$500?” I propose.
“If I’m lucky.”
“I can give you a start.” I buy a flag, he thanks me, and we part ways.
Drifting back to my friends, I see Aadya has connected with a high school clique at their first Pride. My group of rising college seniors and recent grads merge with the children in search of a late lunch, and I feel an overwhelming responsibility to chaperone these children to safety. Three of the children start bickering over their identities, and I start speaking the lessons I wished an older queer mentor had passed along to me like how the external world at large doesn’t support queer people and that despite our differences, we must stand together as a solid community because if not us, then who?
Leaving Dupont Circle, we pass by a white male capitalist selling pride flags at a premium $25 out of his expensive booth. I push the kids ahead, reminding them of where they could buy a cheaper flag of similar quality and continue our hungry pursuit.
Jade and Courtney pull me away when I insist on taking the kids to get ice cream. They remind me that these kids came here of their own volition and that children eventually need to learn how to take care of themselves and grow up.
“This is Pride,” Jade soothes. “They’re safe here.” I shake out my anxieties and hope that there are good people in this world making sure kids have a safe place to explore themselves.
Is that not what both events were fighting for? Up North celebrating the gift of free expression, down South demanding that people have the opportunity to begin living. Pride began as a protest, an overwhelming need by the queer community to be able to live in peace without prosecution. When children are no longer being killed in schools, when trans people can naturally extend their life expectancy, then we can have a country that looks to its future for inspiration rather than its past for execution.
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