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ABSTRACT
The paper argues that Trans Queer Pueblo (TQP)’s protest at the 2017 Pride Parade in Phoenix, AZ, and changes in police participation made by the Pride parade committee in 2020, provide a window for exploring how constructions of sexual citizenship reinforce neo-colonial logics that reproduce and naturalize differential LGBTQ mobilities. Framing citizenship as entailing both belonging (“normative citizenship”) and legal status (“legal citizenship”), I argue that TQP’s protest suggested that curtailing police presence in Pride Parades provides a means to challenge how normative belonging and legal status intertwine to reproduce differential mobilities—used here to mean possibilities for physical movement through space. The Pride Committee’s 2020 ban on police participation reflected important efforts to address how racism and settler colonialism create un/belonging from citizenship within LGBTQ communities; yet showed inability to understand or address how the legal aspect of citizenship reproduces inequalities and differential mobilities.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the editors of this special issue and three anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions; and Reid Gómez for assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 https://www.facebook.com/transqueerpueblo/. Trans Queer Pueblo was formed in 2016 as a merger between Arcoiris Liberation Team and the Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrants Project (The Revolution Relaunch Citation2019). Their 2020 page, “Resilience During COVID-19: Sustaining LGBT Migrant Leaders,” describes their membership: “115 voting members, 84% migrant, 60% undocumented, 14% HIV/Diabetes, 90% poverty level;” the economic impact of the pandemic: “49% is still going to work, 51% has lost their jobs, 73% [of the 51%] lost jobs because of COVID-19; 53% w/out jobs will need support to pay rent.” The site also describes, “Membership in Detention: 41 members in detention; 27% trans identified; 24% chronic illness” (https://www.tqpueblo.org/covid-19, accessed November 11, 2020).
2 Other factors including continuing protests against police killings, the public visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement, and changes made to Pride parades across the nation as organizers grappled with ongoing histories of (settler) colonialism, racism, anti-Blackness, commodification, and cooptation by corporate capitalism no doubt also contributed to Phoenix Pride’s decision concerning the role of police.
3 For another discussion of the protest, see Zecena Citation2020.
4 See Loyd, Mitchelson, and Burridge Citation2013 for discussion.
5 See also Richardson Citation2018.
6 That scholarship has generally treated the United States and Western Europe as universalizable models from which to theorize (Mackie Citation2017; Richardson Citation2017). This paper centres sexual citizenship in the U.S. nation-state, but does not claim the analysis is universally applicable.
7 Differentiating citizenship in this way makes clear that while many people with legal citizenship find that their belonging is constantly called into question on racial, ethnic, sexuality, economic, gender and other grounds, they are nonetheless not in the same position as those who do not hold legal citizenship. Accordingly, coalitions between citizens and migrants are strongest when they address legal citizenship and normative belonging as axes of struggle that affect different groups in different ways.
8 These claims are now considered to fall under the provisions for persecution on account of membership in a particular social group. Nation-states generally adjudicate refugee and asylum status claims (in a manner that replicates dominant nationalist logics—see Miller Citation2005; Shakhsari Citation2014).
9 On the concept of global north/south, Besteman writes, “the concept of global north/south should be understood as a heuristic rather than a literal description; global north has been used to refer to nation-states that have enjoy geopolitical dominance and wealth acquired through plunder; it has also been used uncritically to refer to “levels of development” and to sanction projects and policies that serve modernist models and teleologies of development based on imperial norms” (Citation2019, S26).
10 Scholarship on migrant deportability has explicitly explored how citizenship and non-citizenship relationally co-constitute one another (e.g. Walters Citation2010). Citizens, however, are taught to not make the connections between their/our citizenship status and the sanctioned dispossession of noncitizens.
11 Trans Queer Pueblo (Citation2017), Sin Justicia No Hay Orgullo, No Justice No Pride, https://vimeo.com/210969242.
12 The cards are designed and illustrated by K Tutaya and Stephanie Figgins Ramirez who also recorded the video. Queer and trans communities of colour have been creating decks of tarot cards that reflect and represent histories and people that are often marginalized.
13 For information on the #SayHerName Campaign, launched by the Centre for African American Studies and Centre for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, see https://aapf.org/sayhername.
14 Consequently, despite decades of police reform, resulting “changes have not resulted in better or more just policing. There has also been a frightening continuity of racism, exploitation, and abuse, even as police forces across the country have become more diverse and reflective of the communities they patrol” (Taylor Citation2016, 133).
15 The practices includes disproportionately targeting marginalized communities for enforcement and differentially enforcing the laws.
16 The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 Pub L. 104-208.
17 Paik also argues that “successive administrations have withered the distinction between federal and local law enforcement, thereby expanding the manpower to capture immigrants” (Citation2017, 11).
18 In 2013, a federal judge found that in their efforts to hunt down undocumented people, Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies engaged in systemic racial profiling against Latinx people including during traffic stops. Despite orders to redress these practices, racial profiling against Latinx people in Phoenix, and people of colour across the state of Arizona, remains persistent and deep rooted.
19 By challenging these laws, Jaramillo suggests, Phoenix Pride will begin returning to Pride’s roots in which transgender women of colour take leadership in challenging systemic inequality and remaking the world. This vision is in contrast to what Pride stands for now, according to her tarot reading: “Pride is product placement.” The next card in her reading shows a flapping rainbow flag attached to a McDonald’s sign. “And cooperation with the same police force that deports us.” The following card shows a person facing away from the viewer and toward a rainbow, wearing a jacket that says, “Police ICE,” while talking into a radio. Between these two cards, Jaramillo lays out another card showing a green bag. The bag has a dollar sign, the words “Bank of America,” and the Bank of America logo on it. The bag is held by hands that say, “private prisons,” and is being lowered into a bony, white, skeletal hand that has “Pride” written on the wrist. Jaramillo taps the card and says, “Take note: Pride’s main sponsor, Bank of America, finances the incarceration of our people.”
20 Its full title is “Immigration Procedures: Phoenix Police Department.”
21 See for example, Chase Strangio, “Arrested for Walking While Trans: An Interview With Monica Jones,” ACLU Blog, April 2, 2014, at https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/arrested-walking-while-trans-interview-monica-jones.
22 The group No Justice No Pride, which was officially launched in Washington DC in February 2017, describes, “We exist to end the LGBT movement's complicity with systems of oppression that further marginalize queer and trans individuals. Our members are black, brown, queer, trans, gender nonconforming, bisexual, indigenous, two-spirit, formerly incarcerated, disabled, white allies and together we recognize that there can be no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us” (https://www.facebook.com/pg/nojusticenopride/about/?ref=page_internal accessed November 11, 2020). No Justice No Pride (NJNP) frameworks have been engaged by numerous groups who have protest pride parades nationally and internationally.
23 As Alan Pelaez Lopez (Citation2020) writes, “What is a pride parade to an Indigenous person whose land is occupied by the same people who march in the parade? For Black communities alike (many of whom are also Indigenous), what is pride when the people who march with you are the ones calling the police on you?”
24 This includes in most jurisdictions that describe themselves as “sanctuary” cities or towns.
25 Bailón said the officer told them police could not arrest anyone from the group for blocking the street because it was already closed for the parade. They told her they had paid the $75 fee to march in the parade. He said the officer warned that if Phoenix Pride officials asked, officers could arrest the protesters for trespassing (Náñez Citation2017).
26 Disputing TQP claims that Phoenix Pride had summoned the police, Helfgot, the Pride Parade spokesperson, said “What happened, to my understanding, is that there were some spectators who were not pleased about the interruption of the parade and started becoming confrontational … The Phoenix Police Department, under their own initiation, stepped in because there were safety concerns” (Náñez Citation2017).
27 Phoenix Pride Releases Policy on Police Participation in the 40th Annual Phoenix Pride Festival and Parade, https://phoenixpride.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Phoenix-Pride-Statement-Police-Policy-2020-07-08.pdf, accessed October 30, 2020.
28 In 2018, after discussions with the Pride organizing committee broke down, TQP organized “Justice week,” which was “a new Pride tradition that celebrates all our identities in the struggle toward a world where all LGBTQ+ people are free” (https://www.tqpueblo.org). Justice Week included celebrations of community history, vigils commemorating the deaths of LGBT people of colour, and a town hall focused on fair and respectful policing. Justice Week also included a performance in front of the Eloy Detention Centre, which is deeply infamous for its abusive treatment of migrants including trans women, and because of the numbers who have died in custody there. Located some 65 miles from Phoenix in the desert, Eloy is ringed by layers of razor wire and steel doors where everyone—workers, visitors, everyone—must wait in the scorching sun to get buzzed in. In April 2018, as the sun set, TQP set up a stage in front of the Eloy detention centre where performers and speakers addressed the detained people who could be heard thumping and cheering in response. Movingly, Jaramillo, who was detained in Eloy in 2015, was among the speakers. As TQP’s Dago Bailón told the media, “Even though people in detention cannot attend the Pride parade, we are going to go and celebrate with them. We are going to raise their name and let them know that we are there supporting them” (Montoya Citation2018).