TheRainbowTimesMass.com • The Rainbow Times • 5
December 10, 2020 - January 7, 2021
Boston Pride’s apology results in backlash again; P4TP and other PoC weigh in After racist allegations through the years, others & new org. believe BP should let PoC lead going forward By: Chris Gilmore & Audrey Cole TRT Reporters
IN THE LIMELIGHT
BOSTON—Last week Boston Pride (BP) issued a press release letting the LGBTQ+ community know that the organization is undergoing a transformation to take responsibility for “their actions.” Their actions involve a series of events including what has been explained as a “unilateral decision to remove any reference of Black Lives Matter” from an official “statement on police brutality after the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade,” that lead to the resignation of 80 percent of Boston Pride’s volunteer workforce in June 2020, according to a former statement from Jo Triglio (they/them), past Boston Pride Communications team and cofounder of Pride 4 The People (P4TP). “… the [Boston] Pride Board … rewrote a statement, written by the Communications Team, condemning unjust, racist police violence, and posted it without consulting the Chair of Black Pride or the Communications Team. The statement was met with public outrage over Boston Pride’s persistent and ongoing neglect of issues of racism
tribution of power within the organization, nor to the majority vote of the current Board.” Triglio was one of 21 Committee members, chairs and volunteers who walked out this June to protest what they deemed as the BP Board’s erasure of such a relevant and critical statement pertaining BLM, police abuse and the murder of various black men and black people.
PHOTO: TRT ARCHIVES
and white-centeredness,” read Tuesday’s release from Pride 4 the People – Boston, and Trans Resistance MA. P4TP, has since “demanded the current Pride Board to step down” to no avail. The organization, composed of LGBQ+ people of color, BIPOC, QTPOC and allies, “proposed a transition plan to diversify the [Boston Pride] board and rewrite the bylaws to include power sharing, checks and balances, and transparency.” The BP Board has not met nor answered
their demands, “refusing” to do so, instead. “After six months of silence, the Boston Pride Board has released a transformation plan decorated with bells and whistles that attempts to divert attention away from the lack of structural transformation that is being proposed,” read P4TP’s statement. “This proposed ‘transformation’ process is merely a fancy performance designed to protect the absolute and exclusive power of the current board. It includes no structural change: no change to the bylaws, to the dis-
A key resignation TRT learned earlier this week that the only Latinx BP Board member, Marco Torres, has resigned from the Board. Linda DeMarco, BP Board President, confirmed his resignation to this publication. The Rainbow Times has reached out to Torres for a statement and is awaiting a response. A recent video released by DeMarco, has missed the mark again, according to Jeffrey Rogers, a community member from Cambridge, Mass. “The only thing I saw and heard was an arrogant white woman who doesn’t address people of color, nor sounds interested in communicating with any community members over the constant BP abuse of brown, indigenous and black people and their disdain to work with people like me,” said Rogers, a black gay man who protested
See Boston Pride On Page 6