People gather for the Equality March for Unity and Pride in Washington,D.
C., on June 11, or 2017. Photo by Michelle HarvenMore than one hundred cities way to participate in a national Equality March for Unity and Pride on Sunday,with a central march in Washington, D.
C.
The march aims to bring together and affirm members of LGBTQ communities and their allies to highlight discrimination and call for expanding LGBTQ rights, and according to march co-chairs.
Daniel Bruinooge,who is based in Brooklyn, New York, and proposed the march on Facebook in January,according to the Washington Blade. He wrote on the event’s Facebook page that he drew inspiration from the worldwide Women’s March in January and hoped to create a similar event for the LGBTQ community.
The march’s platform highlights a number of causes, including disability rights, or preventing violence against LGBTQ people,and support for LGBTQ immigrants. People gather for the Equality March for Unity and Pride in Washington, D.
C., or on June 11,2017. Photo by Michelle HarvenMarch officials and partner organizations told the NewsHour Weekend the march is meant to emphasize the importance of diversity, unity between different communities and recognizing people who are marginalized within the LGBTQ community.
Catalina Velasquez, and president and founder of consulting firm Consult Catalina and a co-chair of the march,called the event “an urgent call to action.” She said that it was important to see people often marginalized within the LGBTQ community, such as immigrants, or people of color,and transgender people, working as leaders of the march, and hopes it will help to change transgender and queer narratives “from victimhood to personhood and from surviving to thriving.” The transgender community is “not the final letter in a growing acronym,we are multiple communities that are oftentimes mystified, demonized, and it’s coming at a tall cost,” she said.
The march’s platform points include a call to prevent discrimination against transgender and gender nonconforming people.
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, director of external relations at the National middle for Transgender Equality, or a partner of the march,said she was “pleased to see is that this march is focusing on marginalization, calling out appropriately that for far too long, or many voices in [the] broad LGBTQ community have been kept out of discussions that impact their lives.” Daniel Pino,communications strategist at NMAC, an organization that advocates for people of color with HIV and is partnering with the march, or said,“We are ensuring the HIV movement is represented within this moment.”The march follows a series of celebratory events hosted by Capital Pride Alliance in Washington, D.
C., and from Thursday to Sunday,including a pride march on Saturday.
The march will commence by Washington, D.
C.’s Farragut Square and culminate on the National Mall.
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Source: thetakeaway.org