“Pride was a riot, but liberation is a revolution”

Crystal from Socialist Horizon of Madison gave the following speech at the Madison, Wisconsin Pride Rally and March on June 13, 2026. Video of speech above and text below.

“I’m Crystal from Socialist Horizon, and of course I’m here to say a little about pride.

With all the awful things happening around us, it can feel hard to celebrate pride. When Iranian children are being bombed at their schools, Palestinian families are starving, and immigrants endure horrific conditions in detention centers, how can I celebrate where we are? What does it mean to be proud at this point in time? Surely, it doesn’t mean smiling and waving at the cameras while a Paypal parade float, draped in rainbow colors, follows behind. Not while FedEx, the same company that has contracted millions of dollars to ICE, sends drivers to throw streamers and honk horns among the vibrantly dressed crowd. So how do we celebrate pride?

I think it helps, as always, to address the origins of pride. Everyone knows about the Stonewall riots. Those were massively important for creating a movement of resistance, leading to the first annual commemoration which was called Christopher Street Liberation Day. Not pride, liberation. What is liberation? What is freedom? Because let me ask, is a trans person free when the law recognizes their gender, but they are financially unable to receive the medical care they need? Is an immigrant free when she can marry her wife, but every day ICE threatens to tear them apart? Am I free because I feel proud of my identity? Are we all free when a Democrat is in office? No. The answer is no, because none of us are free until all of us are free. So why the shift from freedom to pride, when freedom is yet to be achieved?

The truth is, no amount of pride or legal rights will mean that queer and BIPOC people have the same freedoms as cishet white people under capitalism and the state which enforces it. So is pride bad? Not so, because pride can pave the way for individuals to engage with the struggle for liberation. If pride allows you to look yourself in the mirror, if pride allows you to dress comfortably, if pride allows you to stand your ground, happy pride. But we must not stop at pride, because as I said previously, pride is not liberation.

True liberation requires abolishing capitalism. And that is exactly why Christopher Street Liberation Day subsequently became Gay Pride Day in the following decade. Because capitalists were afraid of what liberation day was and what it could become. They are afraid of the true power of the queer community, the power of queer people who refuse to assimilate into oppressive systems of whiteness. They are afraid of black trans sisters supporting their gay comrades by throwing bricks at cop cars. They are afraid of people who replace nuclear families, which formed in order to facilitate the generation of capital, with communities of care that transcend class, color, gender, and disability. Because queer people, people of color, working people, have the power to build a movement. The capitalists, they don’t see the work that is happening now. They don’t see the process of mass engagement, the formation of a working class willing to lead, the rage that is not a flash flood but a lasting flame. We each have what it takes to do this. Join us, Socialist Horizon, or any one of these socialist groups, and you’ll see that you have what it takes.

So I’ll end by saying this. We’ve celebrated pride for many years. Now, let’s celebrate liberation. Pride was a riot, but liberation is a revolution. Happy liberation, everyone.”

Crystal is a member of Socialist Horizon of Madison.