Pride Is Still a Riot

My Pride started in the first minutes of June 28, 2025, at H0L0. This venue is not really an unfinished basement, but it feels like one. The walls are bare, and the floors are wood planks that look like they were stolen from ten different construction sites, mismatched, and thrown together. There’s nothing in the room but a bar off to the side and the booth in the middle, surrounded on all sides by dancers. Everywhere the DJ turns their head there’s a face, a body, joy.

My favorite DJ – Rose Kourts – was closing out ABOV Flinta – a party created as a refuge from the harassment and discrimination queer people face for purely being themselves. Flinta is an umbrella term: female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender people. The crowd that night was indicative of that — a swirling constellation of people who have been made to feel unsafe, unwelcome, or unseen in so many spaces. Here, they twirled under low lights, techno and house rolling through the room like thunder. The music felt like a sermon in a chapel, vibrating through my chest until it became part of me. For a moment, nothing else existed but the warmth of bodies in motion and the knowledge that I was part of it.

Before Rose Kourts took over, A Lana, Volvox, and Dominga had already set the room alight in their own ways. A Lana’s sound was shocking in the best sense — moving with a wild abundance that forced you to dance. It wasn’t polite dancing either. It was ecstatic — the kind that makes your body feel like it’s unspooling from the inside out, leaving you sweaty and breathless and alive.

Volvox and Dominga stepped up for their back-to-back sets, bringing a plethora of things to the booth. There was a sexy presence about them that wasn’t the product of performance or production. It was something you either are or aren’t, and they simply were. Their sound felt like an act of defiance in itself — both ethereal and grounded in the core of the earth. One track would lift you into the air, light and untethered, and the next would pull you down deep into the low end, your bones vibrating with bass. They played with a confidence that made you feel safe enough to lose yourself completely, knowing they would catch you and guide you back.

Rose Kourts has that ability too. Her vast and eclectic music knowledge lets her tell stories akin to Jane Austen or Tolstoy. Her sets are epic — blooming across eras and moods just like a life. She sways and shifts from pulsing techno to house to crunchy acid and electro like a breeze moving through a field. One moment it feels like running down a hill with your arms wide open, the next it feels like standing at the edge of an ocean at midnight letting the waves pull at your ankles. Sometimes it feels playful and reckless, other times so deeply tender you have to close your eyes just to keep from crying. She draws inspiration from Black and queer pioneers, leaning into the power music has to move bodies and bring euphoria in a time that feels so chaotic. A few hours of perfect happiness with friends and strangers on the floor, all of us surrendering to the sound, trusting her to take us somewhere we didn’t know we needed to go. When the set ends, it’s like being gently placed back into your body after traveling somewhere far away — the kind of return that makes you want to hold the people around you a little closer.

Walking out into the early morning air after Flinta – the sweat cooling on my neck and my legs aching – I kept thinking about how something as simple as dancing together can feel so necessary. The night felt soft and electric at the same time, and beneath the high of the music was the reminder that gatherings like this are never just about the party. They’re about making space for yourself in a world that wants you smaller, quieter, hidden away. They’re about claiming joy, even when it feels dangerous to do so. Pride is not just the dance floors and the glitter and the final weekend of June. It is all of those things, yes, but it is also a refusal. A refusal to disappear. A refusal to let anyone tell you who you are allowed to be.

Pride began as a riot, but Stonewall was not the first — queer resistance has existed for as long as queer people have existed. In the early 20th century, groups like the Society for Human Rights in Chicago formed in 1924 to fight for gay rights, though they were quickly shut down by police. In the 1950s, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis organized protests, published newsletters, and held meetings to advocate for gay and lesbian rights at a time when homosexuality was criminalized and pathologized. In 1959, patrons at Cooper Do-nuts in Los Angeles fought back against police harassment – throwing coffee cups, donuts, and trash at officers arresting drag queens and sex workers. In 1966, trans women and drag queens resisted arrest at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco – breaking windows, fighting back with purses and high heels, and lighting a police car on fire. These moments were powerful flashes of rebellion, temporary ruptures in an oppressive system.

Stonewall was different — it was the last straw. In June 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, queer and trans people – many of them sex workers, Black and brown, or homeless youth – fought back against the police who raided the bar for the simple crime of existing. It wasn’t a well-planned political demonstration. It was rage and desperation spilling over after yet another raid, another night of humiliation, another round of bruises and insults and arrests. People threw bricks, bottles, pennies, whatever they could find. They set garbage cans on fire and ripped parking meters from the street to use as battering rams. The first night burned with chaos and anger. The following nights burned with organization and hope.

What made Stonewall different was that it didn’t fade away after the police left. Community members formed the Gay Liberation Front and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to keep fighting long after the broken glass was swept up. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie – names we say now like prayers – were there on the front lines, their lives already a daily act of defiance. STAR provided housing for homeless queer youth – mostly trans kids who had nowhere else to go. The Gay Liberation Front rejected assimilation and demanded a radical reimagining of society. Pride marches started just a year later in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, declaring loudly that queer people would no longer accept invisibility. That our lives, our loves, our bodies, and our communities were worth defending. That we were not going to beg for crumbs at the table. We were going to flip the table over.

Over the decades, Pride has grown – layered with floats and rainbow banners, corporate sponsorships, and politicians marching to secure votes. Brands sell queerness back to us as an aesthetic – slapping rainbows on ads while funding the politicians who strip our rights away. Cops march in parades when, for so many of us, they remain a threat. Pride becomes marketable – sanitized and digestible for the mainstream. Its radical roots get buried under confetti and slogans. Underneath all that shine, the spirit of Stonewall remains – a refusal to be erased. An insistence that we deserve to exist in public, to celebrate our lives without fear.

At its core, Pride is a protest. It always has been. Right now, it feels more necessary than ever. Pride is a slap in the face to every government that thinks being queer, trans, or gay is something you choose rather than something you are at birth and discover throughout your life, the same way your purpose is something you are born with and uncover piece by piece as you go. Our existence is not a preference or a trend. It is as innate as breath, as real as bone. To celebrate Pride is to remind the world that we do not owe anyone an explanation or justification. It is to say – simply and powerfully – we are here, and we are not leaving.

This year alone, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across the country. Trans youth are being banned from sports, denied best practice medical and surgical care, criminalized for their existence. Drag performance bans are being passed. Books with queer characters are pulled from school shelves.The same politicians who march at Pride parades to appear progressive vote to cut healthcare for trans kids the very next week. Just this spring, the House passed a bill including federal funding bans for gender-affirming care under Medicaid and CHIP, supported by representatives who proudly post photos at local Pride events. The same companies that sell us rainbow sneakers or paint their logos in Pride gradients fund the campaigns of politicians who legislate us out of public life. A Popular Information investigation found that companies like AT&T, Walmart, and CVS have donated millions to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians in recent years – even while marketing themselves as allies during June.  It feels like every day brings a new reminder that our rights are conditional, our safety is temporary, and the respect we’re offered is only as deep as a month-long rainbow sticker on a storefront window.

Capitalism has found a way to make even Pride profitable – not just in dollars but in psychological loyalty. For the other eleven months of the year, queer people remain invisible to corporate America, except as a demographic to market to discreetly. Come June, rainbow packaging floods stores, brand logos transform, and advertisements tell us we are loved and seen. It is a kind of Pavlovian conditioning – training us to associate consumerism with belonging. For a community that has so often been left out of the economy altogether, told we are too risky, too niche, or too political to serve or employ, there is a dangerous seduction in suddenly being wanted, even if only for what is in our wallets.

Historically, these same corporations have discriminated against queer people in hiring, fired employees for being out, denied trans healthcare coverage, or supported candidates and laws that criminalized our lives. Target, for example, faced boycotts from conservatives for selling Pride merchandise, but when threatened with profit loss, the company quietly moved displays to the back of stores or pulled items altogether – revealing that their support was always about optics, not principle. Brands slap a rainbow on a T-shirt or a vodka bottle, but rarely do they invest in the community in ways that matter: safer work environments, equitable healthcare coverage, protection against harassment, or housing and resource programs for the queer homeless youth who make up nearly half of the unhoused under 25 years old.

It is a reminder that for them, Pride is just a marketing opportunity – a brief chance to profit off our identities before returning to business as usual. For us, though, Pride is not a branding season. It is life or death. It is survival and defiance and radical joy. Their rainbow logos come down on July 1. Our existence does not.

That spirit is what I felt on the dance floor at Flinta. Parties like ABOV Flinta, Bound, Bodyhack, and countless other underground queer gatherings carry that legacy forward. They don’t exist for Instagram optics or sponsorship dollars. They exist because people need them to exist. Because trans women still get turned away at the door. Because non-binary people still hear “Are you on the list?” asked with suspicion. Because disabled queer people are still left out of the party altogether. Because Black and brown queers are still policed on the dance floor, fetishized and erased at the same time. Because so many of us spent our first Pride alone, or hiding, or wondering if we even deserved to show up.

Bound’s fetish parties create consent-centered spaces where queer people can explore sexuality free from the male gaze and cishet violence. Bodyhack builds techno parties where the floor becomes a healing ritual – a place to sweat out grief and fear and shame until only joy remains. Flinta parties carve out intentional space for those who have been made invisible, even within queer communities themselves. Each of these gatherings is more than a party. They are reminders that Pride was never about rainbow capitalism. It was about survival. About building a world where we can live without fear.

Standing in that warm, bare room at H0L0, drenched in sweat and euphoria, I thought about how Pride is still a riot – even if it looks different now. It is in every gathering that creates safety where there was once danger. In every dance floor that welcomes people who are told they are too much or not enough. In every embrace between friends who have spent their lives forging family from scratch. Our joy is not naive. It is deliberate. It is a middle finger to anyone who wishes us silent.

I left Flinta as the sun was coming up, my feet aching, my bikini top drenched, and I felt proud. Not because Pride is easy or uncomplicated – it never has been – but because its existence is defiance in itself. We were never meant to take up this space, to love this loudly, to move through the world with glitter on our cheeks and each other’s names in our mouths like prayer — but we do. Every ABOV Flinta, every Bound, every Bodyhack, every queer gathering in a basement or warehouse or backroom or park – they are Stonewall’s children. Pride is still a riot. It always has been. This year, like every year, I am grateful to be part of the fight.