If you were celebrating Pride last Sunday night, you may have been forced to cancel your plans and head home early. For the past 48 years, queer people and their allies have commemorated the 1969 Stonewall riots every June with marches, parades, and bar crawls through gay neighborhoods. The riots themselves were a reaction of transgender and gay people to the constant police raids on their bars and are considered the landmark event that sparked the LGBTQ radical liberation movement and its subsequent parades. But this year, police successfully shut down postparade celebrations at many bars beginning around 10:30 PM, according to several witnesses and bar employees.
The 2018 post-Pride celebration went differently. There were the same barricades and a similar amount of arrests (a record low this year of approximately 15, police said, in comparison to 21 after the World Series win; in previous years, the number of Pride arrests has been much higher, peaking at 52 in 2015). And yet many bars were not allowed to continue business.
Another Boystown bar manager, who asked not to be named, said that before this year’s Pride festivities, the police department held a community meeting with bar managers and owners at which officers explained that this year the department would have the largest street team for Pride yet and that the majority of the budget would be allocated to police and safety for the people outside the bars on the street. “There was enough police and security to handle these loitering situations,” the manager says, “but most would agree that [police] were just tired of it, said we had enough fun, and closed the strip down.” This manager says he was told by the officer who shut down his bar, “I’m sure most of you bars made enough money by now, there’s no reason to stay open any longer.”
The irony of police presence and control at Pride celebrations can be lost on both queer people and their allies, some of whom know very little about queer history. One year away from the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the purpose of Pride celebrations can be lost on the masses. But when we look at the history books, the battle to gain rights has often moved forward by keeping cops in check.
