PZ Foundation Support for the Reclaim Pride Coalition
In 2019 as LGBTQ activists and allies prepared to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in Greenwich Village that sparked the modern LGBTQ movement, the Reclaim Pride Coalition stepped forward with a plan to stage a march much like the first one in 1970: no floats and no commercial contingents or sponsors.
The PZ Foundation stepped forward with critical seed money for Reclaim Pride’s Queer Liberation March (QLM) as an alternative to the Heritage of Pride Parade. The QLM welcomed all who wanted to march on June 30, 2019 and an estimated 45,000 participated in a brisk, spirited march from the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street up Sixth Avenue (the original route) to Central Park’s Great Lawn where there was a rally headlined by a broad range of diverse activists including the last major public address from Larry Kramer, the co-founder of GMHC and ACT UP.
Also speaking at the rally were original members of the Gay Liberation Front that was formed in 1969 as the Rebellion was unfolding in the streets, transgender activist Cecelia Gentili, Nigerian gay activist Edafe Okporo, poet Pamela Sneed, performers Staveyann Chin, Justin Vivian Bond, and John Cameron Mitchell, Keinon Carter (a survivor of the Pulse Massacre at a gay bar in Orlando), disability justice activist Lydia X.Z. Brown, and HIV activist Jason L. Walker among others.
It is the kind of march that Phil himself would have gotten behind, just as he threw himself into the fight for the gay rights bill and against AIDS–with his camera and by putting his life on the line. And Allen Zwickler joined the march with longtime gay activist Andy Humm, Phil’s friend and colleague in the gay press especially at the Gay Cable Network that produced the national Gay USA cable show in the 1980s and that Andy continues co-hosting with Ann Northrop (a lead organizer at Reclaim Pride) since 1996.
The first QLM march was so successful that even in the first pandemic year of 2020 when parades of all kinds were canceled across the country, the Reclaim Pride Coalition was able to mount a demonstration on the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall dedicated to Black Lives Matter, the cause that was sweeping the nation that summer in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The QLM is now an annual event that takes up the causes of highest concern to the LGBTQ community. The Spirit of Stonewall lives.
– ANDY HUMM
