Photo by Michele Kontaxes Naurock.

More than 1,000 people are calling on Capital Pride to drop Wells Fargo as a sponsor over the bank’s investment in the private prison industry.

“Over the past couple of years there has been a lot of criticism of local pride festivities and parades, both in terms of what those events look like, and the level and depth of corporate sponsorships,” says Heather Cronk, the co-director at GetEQUAL. “Wells Fargo is tabling at Pride one day, and cashing private prison checks the next.”

A petition from GetEQUAL calls for the Capital Pride leadership to “divest from Wells Fargo and the company’s unapologetic support for mass incarceration by returning Wells Fargo’s sponsorship money and removing Wells Fargo as a current or future sponsor of Capital Pride,” as well as institute a policy that bars companies who benefit “from systems of incarceration or detention” from future sponsorships. Wells Fargo is a “Gold” level sponsor, the category below presidential, vice-presidential, rainbow, and platinum.

The petition notes the “disproportionate impact of incarceration and detention on LGBTQ people. LGBTQ people of color, especially trans folks of color, are incarcerated at sky-high rates—and the suffering that ensues is wrecking our community.”

So far, Capital Pride has not responded directly to GetEQUAL, including to an email sent before the campaign launched to inform the organization about the effort, according to Cronk.

“We are looking into the issue and gathering whatever facts are necessary to make an informed response,” Capital Pride said to DCist in a statement. “The 41st celebration of Pride in the Nation’s Capital is already underway and our time is understandably focused on the critical needs of producing the over 30 events that comprise that celebration.”

But Cronk says that the response to the campaign from GetEQUAL members has been largely positive. “We got four angry emails, but we thought it would be a whole lot more telling us were were downers, crashing the party,” she says. More folks appreciated the effort. “This space is supposed to be safe, but you have people fighting their bank and then seeing them at Pride.”

Wells Fargo sponsors more than 50 Pride events across the country as well as advocacy organizations like the Human Rights Campaign. “The reason Wells Fargo sponsors Capital Pride is to look good, and if we can disrupt that, even a little bit, that helps start a conversation,” says Cronk.

Wells Fargo has declined to comment.

What comes next for the Get Prisons Out of Pride campaign depends on what petition signers in the area want. “We want to center the campaign and next steps around what people in the community want and feel,” says Cronk. The organization also aims to provide resources and support for people outside the region who want to question their local pride sponsors.

“We need to be critical of our own community in supporting systems that oppress us,” says Cronk. “The end goal here isn’t to make [Capital Pride] look bad. The end goal is to make change.”