6/26/11 - Seattle, WA
Last night, some queer hooligans had the audacity to take the streets for the third year in a row. It was a smashing time!
Queers Fucking Queers, a free, all-ages street party, erupted on the corner of 12th and Madison at midnight last night. The party quickly breached the confines of what’s tame and legal during Pride weekend when somebody smashed the window of a Ferrari dealership near the meeting point. Then the homo hoards charged down Pike, the windows of two cop cars left shattered in their wake. Rainbow flags became weapons as the queers raged on down Broadway, the cops sniffing along after like rabid dogs on the prowl. But these fascist prudes were too slow to protect a Bank of America ATM and American Apparel from this hot mob of style vandals. The hood of a cop car briefly transformed into a dance floor, and queers fought the cops in the streets. One person was hauled off to jail for "pedestrian interference", but others fought off the pigs and escaped their nightsticks with the help of friends.
It’s all too clear that those of us who refuse to press our lives into their pretty little boxes quickly end up in the ugly little boxes of the King County Jail.
QUEERS VS. COPS
ROUND TWO?
PDF of the leaflet distributed during the event. The text is as follows:
NO HOMONATIONALISM, NO HOMOMILITARISM, NO ASSIMILATION
We're all being told that marriage equality and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell is progress, and that the LGBT community is moving towards equality. But is it really progress? And is equality really what we need?
Some of us queers say no. We're not interested in buying into State-sanctioned monogamy. This is nothing less than assimilation into straight society, the same society that enacts violence against queer people every day. This is sold to us as equality, but what does that mean? It means becoming acceptably heteronormative, begging for tolerance from the same people who have criminalized, marginalized, and murdered us throughout history.
We're not interested in enlisting in the military so that we can kill, be killed, or both, for US imperialism. Whether its queer people dying in the streets (or prisons or the medical system), or queer people dying in combat overseas, it seems that the system loves to see dead queers. Why should queer people fight for a country that brings both structural and interpersonal violence against us? What loyalty do queers have to people who want them dead?
They tell us to celebrate Pride because of how much progress we've made towards equality. We reject the idea that marriage equality or military service is progress, and we reject the goal of equality. We want an end to the system that keeps so many of us in poverty, facing violence every day. We will not fight for them; we will not fuck like them. And we certainly don't buy into a sanitized, corporate version of Pride.
Our desires and relationships will never fit into the categories the State recognizes. Our interests will never align with the interests of heteronormative, capitalist society. We will not join the march towards assimilation. We will not see queer history erased to promote whitewashed, upper-class causes. This society seeks to alienate us and control our desires, bodies, and relationships. We stand in conflict with all who maintain this alienation, and especially those who do so waving a rainbow flag.
-some queer hooligans
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