The Reclaim Pride Coalition was created to gather members of the extended LGBT+ community, especially those most at its fringes such as gender nonconforming, queer youth of color, drag queens, sex workers, and radical lesbians, who seek to march in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots that effectively started the gay rights movement in the United States in 1969. It planned the Queer Liberation March in New York City on June 30, 2019, from the Stonewall Inn, up Sixth Avenue, to Central Park for a rally on the Great Lawn. The main concern of this organization is the protest against a perceived lack of activism increasingly present in the corporate-sponsored floats and police-lined streets in the general celebratory parade that is an annual tradition coordinated by Heritage of Pride. The Reclaim Pride Coalition believes that removing corporate sponsors and a police presence will better connect the march itself to the people, especially those who are believed to be excluded by the heavily sponsored, and much larger, World Pride parade. The result was a second, activist-oriented pride march on the same day to mark the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall. The parade encouraged anyone to march without prior registration.
Reclaim Pride UK
The Reclaim Pride movement has also touched the LGBTQ+ community in the UK, and is growing strong support especially in London, Manchester, Glasgow, and Brighton where Reclaim Pride groups are visibly challenging organisers that run Pride money-making events, where many in the communities have no actual input to the events themselves. Their strong support of Stonewall and the belief that ‘Pride is Freedom, and Freedom is Free’ motivates these coalitions. In Scotland, the Unite trade union's LGBT+ committee blasted the charges imposed on organisations take parting in Glasgow's 2019 Pride event and took aim at big companies using the event merely to 'enhance their customer reach.' As such, they boycotted the event and encouraged other sections of the localgay community to do likewise. Describing Pride as a protest, Unite Scotland's LGBT+ committee wrote:
The Pride movement started as a riot 50 years ago this year at Stonewall Inn and as we remember this, we remember those we have lost and also celebrate the gains we have made. Yet, for some large commercial organisations, support for LGBT equality merely extends to paying a fee for a Pride March or temporary rainbow branding to enhance their customer reach. Once Pride season is over, there is no wider benefit to the LGBT community. We hear nothing about what is happening in our communities, about rising intolerance and hate crime, and the violence being perpetrated against LGBT+ citizens of our country. When people are abused and beaten for being themselves, the response from Pride is deafening in its silence. The politics has been driven from Pride by over-commercialisation and greed of those involved in making it ever more commercial for financial gain.’
