Another Parade, another protest.
And a lot of people dissatisfied with the way the ‘festival’ went.
The question is… why?
I delved into this in my prior blog, and I’m going to go a bit deeper here. After posting my prior blog, thoughts I’d been sitting on for a year or more, some of the feedback I got was pretty telling. It was of the ‘finally someone says this’ variety, or it was ‘SOUR GRAPES!!’, and I was having a rant. I am somewhat upset that there wasn’t much discussion of the solution, because the solution to a lot of Pride’s woes is very, very clear.
It needs to be a democratic community organization. An organization that represents and includes the whole community. The current Pride board is simply reliant on expressions of interest and applications. Inevitably, in such situations, the people on the board end up belonging to the same social groups, or the same type of community, as well as living closely and looking mostly the same, as well as sitting within a particular income bracket. This isn’t me spouting shit – it’s backed up by numerous case studies in ‘meritocratic’ corporations. Therefore, the festival becomes by and for those people, not any one else. Such a system does nothing but encourage rampant nepotism.
Nepotism is a plague that is prevalent in any small community – look at New Zealand itself, for Christ’s sake, but it’s effect is amplified in an even smaller place like the Auckland LGBT community. And it’s what’s damaging Pride. These protests, and the dissatisfaction with Pride, is happening because there is no other vehicle. Criticism of Pride, even data-backed criticism becomes sour grapes – and some prominent media outlets are unwilling to publish negative commentary about their sources of funding and advertising. Or worse, those media organizations begin to constantly chase after the critics to the exclusion of quite a lot else. So it comes out in the ways it does – active anti-participation, and complete and utter apathy. Exhibit A of apathy in much of the community is how the Parade crowds have shrunk year after year, or to be more on point, how many people knew and cared about the fact Outgames fell over. When I managed Queerspace, I think almost no one had heard of Outgames, let alone actually cared all that much. We risk losing the Auckland queer community to a lack of caring.
The lack of democracy in Pride is doing nothing but contribute to this apathy. Why should anyone give a shit about ‘expressions of interest’ when we all know the people who’ve expressed interest have long been asked to put their names in the hat? There are larger organizations than Pride that organize similar events that are wholly democratic in who makes up their boards. There is the obvious example of student unions, or political parties, or heck, even the local boards and Council. It is not hard. And it needs to be done.
Because Pride needs to change it’s tune real quick, or it’s going to go. It’s not going to go with a bang, either. It will go to the silent, indifferent chorus of indifference that is ‘I don’t really give a fuck’.
kiwiqueer 