Sky: Full Interview

TRANSCRIPT

Sky
Interviewer Clare McCormack
28th November 2018

CM: Sky, you were talking about Pride as a protest block in 2017; do you want to tell us about the protest block?

S: Yeah, so in the summer of 2017 there was a group of people from various different organisations in Leeds. I think it was No Borders, Black Lives Matter, Trans Leeds, My Queer Culture, or My Q Culture, Queer & Now, Angel of Youths – were the main... yeah the main groups in that block, and we decided that we needed to take back Pride from sort of corporate sponsorship and what it has become and reclaim it as a protest and not for profit. So the reason why we thought this was important was because of the hypocrisy around a lot of these big corporate sponsorships such as like Barclays Bank leading Pride that year in Leeds, but also other big corporations like Virgin sponsoring a big part of the London Pride and that's the same organisation that their planes are taking LGBT people back to countries where they're, they can be prosecuted for their gender or sexuality and it just felt like it's, it's not a community event, it's not a, it's not connected to the roots of where it's origins are.

It was originally a protest against police violence where Marsh P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera threw stilettos at the police who were raiding their nightclub in self-defence [sound of doorbell - laughs] and we needed to reclaim that as a protest. It’s a celebration and a protest but it’s also a chance, a platform to get any, like, big issues that the community still face today to platform them and pressure governments to think about human rights and start these conversations, rather than just celebrating how many employees there are in a company and not thinking about, yeah, the wider issues in that and it sort of, you can see this discontent around in the community by how many alternative, or black, or trans prides are being set up as sort of offshoots of the main pride that isn't representing, yeah, the voices of the community and the issues that need to be talked about as well as celebrated.


So as a result of that we organised a block that was deliberately going to jump in front of the parade and lead the march so there was about 30 or 40 or us, including kids and people – like young and old – and people of all nationalities and backgrounds. We, like, yeah so as soon as the horns went off and the Pride started we jumped in front of the huge rainbow flag and let off smoke bombs – I can't remember what they're called –

CM: Smoke flares

S: Smoke flares and there was a really good picture that was taken of the block which went viral yeah really quickly and had 30,000 views or something. [background noise] And we had a lot of banners that were talking about like 'black lives matter' and 'no human being illegal' and the names of Marsha and Sylvia were on there with the big stiletto. And just visibilising [unclear] like other messages that we thought were important. And we had a big sound system and a speaker that was talking throughout the parade about why we're here, what we're protesting, what issues the LGBTQI+ communities still face today, such as being deported by the Home Office in Leeds... or the police violence that they're, like, experiencing disproportionately and it was, yeah, it was a success in that we were... they let us go in the end. There was a bit of a tussle at the start and the police were trying to take the sound system off us and stop us from going up the street we wanted to go up and then they rerouted Pride march to go up a different street because they couldn't move us off the road, but in the end we kind of jumped back in front of that, in front of them on the other road that they'd moved to.

And there was a lot of young people who kind of got bored of what they were – the celebration behind – and joined into the protest block and even got on the mic and talked about their experiences which was really lovely and they were maybe sixteen years old or something, which was really lovely to see. And in the end we sort of stood at the gates of the sort of – where people go at the end to the party... [bumping sounds – laughs]. And sort of, yeah, bigged up all the organisations that are doing really good work for the community and, sort of, yeah, called out the problems that the different corporations have done in this space. So it was, yeah, it was a way of everyone in the march seeing this message and it was a success in that way but it was also totally not perfect and our own message was undermined by the fact that we, yeah, like we were kind of hypocritical in the fact that we invisibilised the black and brown and trans voices in our own organising group by producing a video on the day and publishing that online without checking in and asking if they wanted, if the people in the video whose soundbites were included wanted crediting or wanted their names in there or if they consented to being put on the internet which was – even though there was the best intentions – it was definitely not done well. And we didn't really stop and think about whose voices were in the room when we were making that decision and the intersections of how class and – not class, sorry, in that context but - intersections of how gender and race and sexuality intersect and how we were oppressing those voices in our own group, so that was like a big lesson that was learnt and it was really important and I am really grateful for the people that did call us out because that's really hard to do and we then re-edited the video and put it up the way they wanted to be credited and, yeah, it's still online so you can see the film. yeah. That's all that happened.

CM: I don't think I have any questions this time. [Unclear] Thank you very much.

[END]