Pride 2019: The History of Police and Pride

Fifty years ago this month, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, an LGBTQ-friendly bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, led to days of riots and spontaneously birthed the modern LGBTQ rights movement. That’s why Pride is celebrated in June, and it’s why LGBTQ activists around the country have been resisting the presence and participation of police in recent years’ Pride events.

In past years, the Metro Nashville Police Department has maintained a presence at the Nashville Pride Festival. Beyond the officers on duty, the department has typically had a booth at the fest. But earlier this year, a coalition of activists came together under the banner of “No Pride in Police” to call for an end to that practice. 

“At every stage of this ongoing struggle, the police, as the sanctioned enforcers of the state, have been our opposition and our oppressors,” read a statement the group released in April. “Indeed, it will be the police who drag us out of bathrooms and business places in shackles, who will harass us when our name or gender markers don’t match our ‘biological sex,’ who will drive us into ghettos when we can’t find work. Why, then, are the police permitted a place at the 50th anniversary of the riot that birthed our movement?”

The coalition included organizations like the Middle Tennessee Democratic Socialists of America, Black Lives Matter and Showing Up for Racial Justice. 

The group presented Nashville Pride organizers with three demands: That MNPD not participate in the parade; that the department not have a booth at the festival; and that MNPD officers not be allowed to patrol inside the festival. At the same time, the coalition made clear that they were not trying to bar LGBTQ police officers from the event. 

“This isn’t about preventing individuals from participating in Pride,” the group wrote about its efforts. “It’s about who we want to honor with a place in the celebration and we don’t think MNPD should be honored.”

Some of those issues were essentially non-negotiable, Nashville Pride board member Phil Cobucci tells the Scene. Any parade or festival — especially one as large as Pride, which organizers expect to draw something like 50,000 people this year — has to work with police on road closures and security. 

“It’s a very tricky sort of balance for us to be walking,” Cobucci says. While citing the desire to keep attendees safe, he also acknowledges the history of Stonewall and an incident last year in which Metro police officers and firefighters took photos of a transgender person and mocked them on social media. 

Pride organizers, the No Pride in Police coalition, and the police eventually came to a compromise. Metro police officers who march in the parade will not be in uniform. They won’t have a booth inside the festival, but MNPD’s Sgt. Catie Poole — who was MNPD’s first LGBTQ liaison before a recent promotion — says that’s because slots filled up quickly this year. 

“They’ve been good conversations, productive conversations,” Cobucci says. “I think that there’s ongoing communication and relationship-building that needs to happen between all parties. Not only between Pride and Metro PD, but between Metro PD and these protesters. Because at the end of the day, Nashville Pride is an organization that is focused on building community. So everything that we can do to create community and create dialogue, to build each other up and to celebrate who we are as people, that’s what we’re focused on.”

Poole says MNPD officers who want to march in the parade will be purchasing MNPD Pride T-shirts, with proceeds going to Oasis Center, a Nashville nonprofit that helps teens in crisis. 

“We decided to take the unity approach,” she says. “So it’s not going to be like a quarter of us or a half of us wearing uniform and the rest wearing whatever clothes they want. We’re all going to be wearing the same thing. It will just send that stronger, more visible message, I think, while at the same time minimizing the intimidating factor, I guess, to some people.”

When the compromise was announced last month, No Pride in Police leaders called it a victory.

“We’ve won what we set out to achieve, and this is a compromise we’re happy with,” reads a statement posted on the group’s Facebook page. “And who knows what we can accomplish in the future! A better world is possible, and we build it together.”