Photo by nevermindtheend.

A group that has been critical of Capital Pride has announced it will host its own events on the same weekend as an alternative to the slate of mainstream LGBTQ activities.

“If Pride does not provide the space to be affirmed, I’m going to put my energy towards creating that space,” says Lourdes Ashley Hunter, executive director of Trans Women of Color Collective. “The average age of a black trans person is 35 and I’m 41, so I don’t have time not to create spaces for joy.”

This isn’t the first year Hunter is skipping Capital Pride. “I never have [participated] because it’s not reflective of my identity as a trans woman, as a black person, as a fat person, as a person who is poor, who is disabled.”

Hunter adds that having the event filled with uniformed police, when the ACLU of D.C. is currently suing MPD for entering her apartment and arresting her without a warrant, alienates people like herself.

“Some people are trying to show that police are more friendly, but that’s not true across the board,” she says. “Pride is about LGBT pride—it’s not about police pride. You don’t have LGBT people who are doctors coming out in their scrubs. Leave your gun, and your badge, and your uniform at home, unless you’re functioning in the role of police officer.”

Capital Pride will host a series of events of citywide events from June 8-11, including a concert with Miley Cyrus as a headliner. Capital Pride also held Capital Trans Pride last weekend, and has DC Black Pride this weekend.

Hunter is working alongside the group No Justice No Pride to create a healing space on Saturday, June 10. But while Hunter is focusing on the healing space as an alternative, activists from No Justice No Pride have also been trying to change the way that the Capital Pride Alliance works.

“We went to a Capital Pride board meeting in early April where we raised some of our concerns about the corporate sponsorship of Pride, the presence of MPD at the parade, and the reliance on the police to do crowd control,” says David Thurston, an organizer with No Justice No Pride, which is an offshoot of the group Resist This! “We went to another meeting in early May where we expressed more dissatisfaction.”

No Justice No Pride also uncovered controversial writings from an executive producer of Capital Pride, leading to his resignation.

Capital Pride Alliance Executive Director Ryan Bos told DCist in late April that the board is “in the process of developing some standards” for sponsorship, though it wouldn’t focus on that effort until after this year’s festivities.

This isn’t the first time that Capital Pride has faced criticism over its corporate sponsorship. Last year, LGBTQ group Get Equal called on Pride to drop Wells Fargo as a sponsor.

“Groups for years around the country are making similar calls to their local Prides,” says Angela Peoples, executive director of Get Equal. She recently wrote an editorial for MetroWeekly calling on Pride to reject elaborate celebrations in lieu of the “freedom, liberation, and self-determination that make Pride a tradition worth celebrating.”

Peoples is not impressed with Capital Pride’s response to their demands. “The responses have been very ‘Sure, absolutely, let’s talk about unity’ without adding in any context about accountability and accepting responsibility for the choices they’ve made that have brought us to this point.”

While the movement against the corporatization of Pride has been ongoing, says Peoples, this year “there’s definitely more—more momentum and more consensus among more of the community that something is not right.”

Thurston agrees. “This is a ‘which side are you on’ kind of moment,” he says.

This is a challenge for Capital Pride, which executive director Bos characterizes as an event where “we value everyone’s voice, we value everyone’s perspective,” and not everyone wants Capital Pride to take a political stance.

A searing editorial from The Washington Blade’s Mark Lee criticized No Justice No Pride as “a group of far-left zealots” who “purport to speak for all of us when in reality they are reflective of few outside their minuscule number.”

Thurston, of No Justice No Pride, says he “was really taken aback by that article. There are divisions in any marginalized community, you have to lean in the direction of siding with the most marginalized people in that community.”

But Hunter, of Trans Women of Color Collective, doesn’t think Lee is entirely wrong. She says that No Justice No Pride is “primarily led by cis-white people” and initially wasn’t centering “the leadership of those they’re actually speaking for.” At first, they planned a much larger festival to compete with Capital Pride. However, she says the group has listened to criticism, scaling back to a healing space.

Thurston, who is black, says that No Justice No Pride has “definitely tried to listen to Lourdes and Ruby [Corado, executive director of Casa Ruby] and take a lead from them about what’s most appropriate.”

In addition to the healing space, members of No Justice No Pride will be protesting the main event with a day of action.

“Pride exists to communicate an urban rebellion against repression,” says Thurston. “For the working class queer and trans folks, who are mostly people of color, the vision that ‘We’re just like you, just give us marriage equality’ just doesn’t hold water.”