As we stand at the threshold of Pride Month, the air is thick with a familiar tension. There’s the glitter, the music, the promise of celebration. But Pride is so much more than a party. Its also a time to educate and be educated, to organize. It's a time to further the fight against institutions that keep us from accessing life beyond this month. Pride is a time that acknowledges the profound disillusionment many of us feel trying to find joy in  the midst of genocide. Pride is so much more than a party..

I sat down to write this, a week out from the start of disability pride month, as I scoured the internet to try and confirm if the launch of Governor Stitt’s new “make Oklahoma healthy again” initiative would in fact include the presence of US Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And, because this timeline continues to be the worst, it seems that indeed he will be here in Oklahoma to spew anti-vaccine, anti-science rhetoric on the record with our Governor, in what I anticipate will be a plan that focuses not on resources for the health and well-being of Oklahomans, but instead on the white, Euro-centric weight-based ideals that celebrate only those able-bodied people able to perform and contribute to communities at a level that benefits the demands of capitalism as healthy. And while I could rant at an extended length about the harms of the policies being pushed at state and national levels under the guise of popular health, I instead want to focus on the long history of mad, disabled resistance leaders in 2SLGBTQ+ spaces, and the way disabled folks have engaged in disruption to win better conditions for all of us, while often ourselves being left out of and/or excluded from spaces that claim to be organizing for our collective liberation. 

As we stand at the threshold of Pride Month, the air is thick with a familiar tension. There’s the glitter, the music, the promise of celebration. But Pride is so much more than a party. Its also a time to educate and be educated, to organize. It's a time to further the fight against institutions that keep us from accessing life beyond this month. Pride is a time that acknowledges the profound disillusionment many of us feel trying to find joy in  the midst of genocide. Pride is so much more than a party..

This past weekend, a stark reminder of this dissonance shook our community. Pride on 39th, meant to be a sanctuary, called the cops on a Dyke March OKC for showing up in a way they didn't agree with. During Pride. Let that sink in. Pride, born from the raw fury of a riot against police brutality and corruption, a riot that centered Black and Brown trans folks and our fight for survival against a system that often leads to our deaths, decided to invite the very force it was founded to resist.