Defund 'Rainbow Capitalism'

Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza | News-Leader

It’s Pride month across the country, and while many cities are gearing up to kick off their Pride events, I want to raise our awareness to something I have come to call “Rainbow Capitalism.”

Originally, Pride festivals were events where trans people of color, drag queens and other non-normative queers took place in the front of parades and were unashamed about their queerness and refusal to capitulate to the logic of the norm. Their motto? “We’re here and we’re queer!” Nowadays, across the country, Pride events are hosted and most always financed by corporate sponsorship. This no doubt is the commodification of Pride into the entanglement of neoliberal capitalism. Don’t get me wrong! I think it’s very important for the LGBT and queer communities to celebrate. In fact, I’m wearing a shirt this year that reads “Proud AF!” My caution is to the ways that current Pride events bear the mark of normalizing tendencies and are expressions of today’s corporate machine. Of course, I am glad that in the 21st century, there are corporations that are exercising their voice in being "diverse," but I don’t believe for a minute that these corporations have the LGBT or queer communities’ best interest at heart. Oftentimes, corporate interests are designed to advance their product and raise awareness to their brand. This is all part of capitalism and the entanglement of neoliberalism that is death-bringing to the least of these — the margins of the margins.

My hope is that we can come to hold the complexity of today’s Pride events and not displace those who originally took place in the front of the parades! We need not silence those who are most impacted by the corporatization of Pride, and we certainly are unable to opt out of the system of capitalism. Though finding ways to develop community Pride events that serve as fundraisers for those who are most impacted by anti-queer policies would be a good place to start! This year, I’ll be attending the Pink and Purple Party in Nashville that will serve as a fundraiser for the Tennessee Equality Project. This event, the brainchild of my friend Dr. Christopher Ott and his partner Jeremy Simmons, is one of the best community events I have attended. While first appearing in Denver as the "Pink Party" and debuting in their backyard, the Pink Party in Denver grew to be the largest fundraiser for One Colorado. Now that Chris and Jeremy are living in Nashville, they are reinventing it for the Nashville community.

Though fundraisers are often attended by a certain segment of the community, it is important to have a diversity of tactics when thinking through Pride and the festivities of Pride. The questions I ask are these:

Are we mobilizing our LGBT and queer communities to have a voice and place in our civic life?

Are we responding to the pressing social concerns of our LGBT and queer communities at a policy level?

These two questions are best answered in community. The reason for this is that when we begin to create a multiplicity of voices in our varying LGBT and queer communities, we are best able to respond to the needs expressed. We cannot rely on one organization to do all the work for the entire community. We must harness our imagination and create a network of multiple voices to make the necessary changes for our LGBT and queer communities. When we turn to community, we make little moves against destructiveness that Rainbow Capitalism often fortifies. When we turn to community, we turn to the people who embody the questions that are animating all of our minds, and we begin to listen differently and listen to the ground of being. When we do this, we fortify our efforts for collective liberation, an original demand of the first Pride events!

Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is a queer activist, Latinx scholar, director of Public Theology Initiatives at Faith Matters Network, Nashville, Tenn., and a member of SACRED (redsgf.org)