Friendly Reminder From The HRC: ‘Pride Is More Than A Parade’

Jennifer Leonard

Human Rights Campaign’s new video calls us all to ‘Fight Back with Pride.’

The Human Rights Campaign released a video this morning to kick off Pride month. The video serves as both a history lesson and call to action. Footage from throughout our history plays on screen, while audio from actresses Sheryl Lee Ralph’s acceptance speech for the HRC’s National Ally for Equality Award 2022, and Alexandra Billings’ speech from the 2022 HRC Houston Dinner (both of which are worth watching in their entirety). 

“They’re terrified of us,” Billings begins over a clip of police in riot gear coming to disrupt a protest against the silencing of Montana Representative Zooey Zephyr. “Because they don’t like our freedom,” she continues as we are met with a reminder from covering nearly the entire screen.

“Pride is more than a parade,” it reads.

In comes Sheryl Lee Ralph, “Don’t sit there looking so good, thinking the fight is over,” she says. “The fight has just begun.”

“You come from a family of revolution,” says Billings, speaking once again. “That is the foundation from which you were born. You literally come from human beings who not only know how to picket, we know how to win.”

However this is not a fight any of us can do on our own. We have to stick together. Billings speaks of how we have fought together to get this far, and HRC Director Kelley Robinson calls us to remember that the fight against human rights across the board are intersectional, and we cannot fight homophobia and transphobia without also fighting against misogyny, and white supremacy, and antisemitism, and all forms of xenophobia.

“We are going to be centering equality and liberation for all, period,” Robinson says to a crowd of protestors.

As more clips play back to back, Billings is given the last word. She emphatically delivers a call to action for all of us:

“Mark my words. We are not going anywhere. Now get out, and begin.”

Watch the video here.


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