It’s Pride Month. Here’s a thread for white LGBTQ people, because like the rest of you, I’m mad as hell at the police-instigated violence.

As a white trans woman, I’ve benefited from the sacrifices made long ago by people like Marsha P. Johnson, Miss Major, Sylvia Rivera, etc.

I’ve also had the honor to be on the front lines of today’s trans advocacy movement, working as hard as I could to hold those in power in our own movement accountable to the injustices we continue to perpetuate on Black and brown bodies.

Pride started as an uprising, and it turned into a gross shadow of what it started as, with corporate branding and collaboration with the cops and money and partying as the end goal.

Here’s our shot to take back that heritage. We’re so quick, and rightly so, to hold people accountable when they discriminate against us. We pressure politically, we boycott, we get out there in the media and shame bigots into recognizing our power.

We MUST use that power now.

Protest. If you can’t protest, give money to bail funds or be someone’s buddy to bail them out of jail. If you don’t have cash, maybe you’re immunocompromised or disabled, put some political pressure on and make some phone calls. Raise hell.

We all have sacrifices to make.

And don’t forget to have hard conversations with your friends and family about why this uprising is important, why #BlackLivesMatter , why we must defund and demilitarize the police and rein them in and put them under civilian oversight, why we must end the carceral system.

Happy Pride? Not this year. This year we WORK instead of dancing and drinking and reveling. And try to make up for the fact that we should have been working all along.