Despite a historic heatwave and serious security concerns, this year’s Taking B(l)ack Pride event continued on with huge success. On one of Seattle’s hottest days ever, hundreds gathered at Jimmy Hendrix Park to celebrate Pride Month, and specifically the contributions of BIPOC people in the LGBTQ rights movement, hence the name Taking B(l)ack Pride.
The event has become a nationally trending topic after disputes around a request for a reparation-based entrance fee system. But nothing could have stopped the second annual Taking B(l)ack Pride event. Black performers showed no sign of heat exhaustion while on stage and continued well after the sun set.
“I felt like I was at Brooklyn again at AfroPunk,” says one performer.
The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.
We also post the Morning Update Show here on theEmerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.
Morning Update Show — Thursday, June 24
LIVE — Gusti Clark | Seattle Mayoral Candidates & Reparations | Taking B(l)ack Pride Update | Critical Race Theory
The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.
We also post the Morning Update Show here on theEmerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.
Morning Update Show — Wednesday, June 23
Taking B(L)ACK Pride Update | Voting Right Bill Fails to Proceed | Black UW Police Officers File Lawsuit | LIVE — Ben Brandow of KBCS | LIVE — Tahimna Watson – Immigration Lawyer
The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.
We also post the Morning Update Show here on theEmerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.
Morning Update Show — Tuesday, June 22
Black Love Returns to the Central District | TAKING B(L)ACK PRIDE | Black Girl Magic | Seattle Rescue Plan | News and Headlines
The term “Gay Pride,” coined by gay rights activist Thom Higgins in Minnesota, has become the most common way to articulate the many celebrations held during this month every year. In the U.S., Prides and festivals are usually held in the month of June to commemorate the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, a series of demonstrations by the New York City Queer community protesting a violent raid of the Stonewall Inn and the ongoing brutality they were experiencing at the hands of the New York Police Department. Today, Pride Month is a time to celebrate the increased visibility of and continued desire for equality and self-affirmation for the LGBTQ+ community.
by Raven Two Feathers in collaboration with Julie Keck
Since time immemorial, Indigenous people have celebrated storytelling as a way to connect the present to past lessons and future dreaming. Narrative sovereignty is a form of land guardianship, and Nia Tero supports this work through its storytelling initiatives, including the Seedcast podcast, as well as in this column for media partner the South Seattle Emerald.
June is commonly recognized in the United States as Pride Month, a tight 30 days during which LGBTQIA+ folks, whom for brevity I’ll refer to as queer in this piece, are typically expected to embrace being out and proud. Before pandemic times, parades and throbbing beats and feather boas were abundant; corporations are still leaning hard on adding rainbow filters to their logos. However, not as many people know June is also Indigenous History Month in Canada which has bled into the U.S. through proximity and because the same genocidal tactics are happening on both sides of the border. This month lies at the intersection of queerness and Indigeneity, which is especially lovely, because so do many of my loved ones, including yours truly.
Osiyo, Sgeno, Nya:wëh sgë:nö’, Haa marúawe, ʔi, syaʔyaʔ. Hello, my name is Raven Two Feathers; I’m Cherokee, Seneca, Cayuga, and Comanche. I live on Coast Salish territory, commonly known as Seattle. I am from Pueblo, Diné, and Apache territory (Albuquerque, New Mexico). I’m an Emmy-award winning creator with a B.F.A. in film production, and most pertinent, I’m Two Spirit and trans masculine. No need to worry if this is the first time learning the term Two Spirit: I wrote a whole comic about my journey toward better understanding myself called Qualifications of Being. It includes a primer on what it means to be Two Spirit on page 25. You can read it here for free!
Intentionalist is built on one simple idea: where we spend our money matters. We make it easy to find, learn about, and support small businesses and the diverse people behind them through everyday decisions about where we eat, drink, and shop. #SpendLikeItMatters
LGBTQIA+ small business owners have a lot to be proud of, from overcoming the barriers of being queer and out in the professional world, to navigating the year of pandemic shutdown that shocked the world. Despite it all, they keep going.
Historically, LGBTQIA+-owned businesses and spaces have been places of refuge, of rebellion, and the only places queer people could find other people like them. To this day, our communities gain so much from LGBTQIA+-owned small businesses. Queer business owners create safe, welcoming community spaces, donate profits to LGBTQ+ nonprofit organizations, and queer children have role models to look up to.
LGBTQIA+-owned businesses contribute over $1.7 trillion to the U.S. economy, creating good jobs and innovating industries, and building wealth in the LGBTQIA+ community, according to The National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Take this opportunity to spend with pride and be intentional about giving money back to LGBTQIA+-owned small businesses.
This month, Intentionalist is teaming up with Seattle Sounders FC, Seattle Storm, Seattle Seahawks, OL Reign, Seattle Mariners, and Seattle Kraken to encourage everyone to Spend With Pride. Upload your receipt from a local LGBTQIA+-owned business to Intentionalist’s website for a chance to win a Pride prize pack from your favorite sports team. If we hit our goal of $25,000, each team will make a donation to support local nonprofit Gender Diversity.
Here are three Seattle-area businesses where we encourage you to Spend With Pride!
Stories about radical activism in response to the AIDS crisis run the risk of being white-washed or oversimplified. Movies and documentaries about the start of the epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, for instance, often imply that response activism was largely the work of white gay men, and typically revolve around New York, the birthplace of the international grassroots organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power). In fact, HIV and AIDS activism centrally relied on BIPOC contributions that are often left out of popular narratives, and what happened in New York is only one story.
“Stonewall was a riot!” is a popular chant heard at Pride marches, and it’s not wrong. At the heart of Pride is a commemoration of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, sparked when queer and transgender people took a stand against a police raid at New York’s Stonewall Inn. LBGTQ+ communities and activist groups have convened every summer since then in cities around the world for marches, rallies, and festivities that honor this historic resistance. In keeping with the origins of Pride — and especially given the violent and sometimes deadly confrontations between police and protesters during last year’s protests for Black lives — Capitol Hill Pride Fest (CHPF) organizers announced that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) will be banned from their events.
President Joe Biden’s multiple restructure plans focus significantly on building and creating new infrastructure, training trades workers, and supporting labor unions. However, without a cultural reckoning for the trades that addresses the toxic workplace culture permeating much of the industry and preventing nontraditional workers from entering or remaining in the trades, the restructure plan will further exacerbate the racial and gender disparities. Biden’s ambitious plans lean on the trades to address the economic impacts of COVID-19, the significant unemployment and the subsequent lack of health insurance.
However, the trades are rife with racism, toxic masculinity, and stagnant representation. For the restructure plans to succeed, the trades must address the toxic workplace culture to move the trades toward safety, inclusion, and not just cultural competence but cultural humility. Without safety, inclusion and humility, the restructure plan will further exacerbate the racialized inequality mirrored across America’s history and contemporary policies. ANEW and Reckoning Trade Project have an answer, and the compass to continue to guide. It starts with cultural humility.
