NORTHAMPTON - The city's annual Pride March will mark its 30th anniversary on May 7 with comedy, music, political speeches and a protest by a segment of the gay community that feels the event has become too commercial.
What began as a take-your-life-in-your-hands venture into the streets in 1982 has evolved over the years into a celebration of the gay community's accomplishments. Last year's event drew a record 15,000 people from as far away as Florida and Illinois, according to organizers. In an ironic twist, however, the march in which same-sex participants once kissed defiantly in front of evangelical protesters, now finds itself couched as The Establishment.
"It's gotten extremely conservative," said Gerry Scoppettuolo, a gay man who helped organize the first Northampton march in 1982. "There's no political messaging. It's a virtually all-white enterprise. I find it a radical departure from what Pride is supposed to be."
Scoppettuolo is part of Queer Insurgency, a multi-racial group spanning the gay community, which plans to stand along the parade route this year holding signs with messages such as "What about racism?" and "What about teen suicide?" The group points out that 19 of the 20 members of the Noho Pride Committee and all four parade marshals this year are white. More tellingly, they say, the event has become more about money than politics.
"By becoming an entertainment event, they are changing qualitatively what Pride was," said Bet Power. "An equal rights march."
Like Scoppettuolo, Power, the executive director of the Sexual Minorities Archives, was around for the first Northampton march 30 years ago. Back then, he says, gays were just starting to come out in public, building on the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969 in which a group of gays, many of them transgender, rioted in New York after police raided a gay bar there. Many credit that uprising with touching off the gay rights movement.
In Northampton, tension within the diverse and political gay community has always been part of the march. In some ways, it has even fueled it. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were battles over the very name of the event as bisexual and transgender factions struggled for inclusion. As gay people won more and more access to the mainstream, including the legal right to marry, the parade has tended more toward celebration.
There were also some years in which the march almost didn't happen, with volunteers stepping in at the last minute to organize it. Several groups took stabs at forming a permanent committee, with Noho Pride most recently incorporating last year to take over the event.
Bear White, the director, pointed out that everyone involved with the event is an unpaid volunteer. She also said that Noho Pride tries hard to include every segment of the gay community. Last year, for example, transgender people were involved behind the scenes and on stage, where two served as masters of ceremony. One of the group's board of directors is also transgender, she said.
Power acknowledges that the gay community has made some breakthroughs, but said most of the benefits have gone to the white, middle-class sector.
"Some of us can't assimilate, even if we wanted to," he said.
Although the Pride event itself is free, Power notes that tickets for headliner Kate Clinton's separate show are $40 and that other ancillary events put on by Noho Pride are making money.
"The name says it all," he said. "It's become a brand, and it's good for local tourism."
While White welcomes people expressing their concerns at the march, she said no one came forward during the planning process to voice them. She added that there were spaces on the planning committee available to those who wanted to be involved.
"Coming earlier would have been more productive," she said.
Queer Insurgency is sponsoring a slide show at the Media Education Foundation at 60 Masonic St. on the radical origins of the Pride movement at 7 p.m. on the evening of the march. Scoppettuolo, meanwhile, said the group has no intention of disrupting the event.
"It's not our desire to clash or be divisive," he said. "We just want to fill in the blanks."
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