While many Angelenos celebrated the 55th annual L.A. Pride and mainstream news outlets like ABC7 and FOX11 news covered the celebrations, the reality for many other Angelenos involved tear gas, rubber bullets, and breaking news coverage from community outlets like CALÓ News.

If we were to take a step back into the history of Pride, we would be angered by the amount of violence and pain that led to the protests on the dawn of June 28, 1969. The Stonewall uprising took place as a result of police raids at the now-infamous Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York City. That night that has gone down in history as a canon event for queer and trans life, started when police raided the Stonewall Inn and arrested multiple people. The arrests and the police brutality involved, led to an uprising that lasted a total of six days.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were credited as being the first people in that historical moment, to start the movement we now know and celebrate as Pride. They were brown, beautiful, people who transformed our notions of fear and action. Wherein, we must act in order to not live in fear. The people at the Stonewall Inn on that night in June all those years ago, and all of the queer and trans people now, have something deeply unsettling in common.

We both live in a constant state of fear and anxiety.

We live in such a major state of fear, that anxiety, depression and other mental health issues —  including substance abuse disorders — tend to be particularly prevalent in the LGBTQ community. According to Mass Gen, the U.S. is facing a mental health crisis. Nearly 40 percent of the LGBTQ population in the U.S. reported experiencing mental illness last year. That figure is around 5.8 million people. 

Pride began as the very type of protest that went on this past weekend over the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids where people have now been taken into custody, reporters have been shot with rubber bullets and tear-gassed, and where union president David Huerta was taken into custody and allegedly charged with federal conspiracy charges.

Over the weekend, I celebrated Pride. I admittedly celebrated being queer, while my other communities experienced fear in the face of arrests, tear gas to the eyes and baton blows to the head.

I am a proud child of immigrants. My mother is Colombian and migrated here in the early 80’s, settled down in West L.A and built a life with children, houses and her religious community.

My father migrated here in the mid-to-late 80’s from Mexico, where he and his family were hardworking farmers. He has worked at his job without rest, for over 35 years. He raised the ranks from line worker, to general manager. He does not miss work. He follows every rule and he is never late. Both are documented, but only because of luck and the ease of getting papers back when there weren’t so many bureaucratic steps to gaining citizenship or a green card legally.

My parents and their extended family are proof of a now-distant American dream. One in which we gain status, we become homeowners, business owners, have children and send them off to college to learn things that those parents can’t even imagine.

Though they did the best they could, my parents had other challenges and barriers to their success. So I did it for them. I did it for all of us.

My road to where I am now was paved with uncertainty, food insecurity, homelessness, and many other factors that pushed and pulled me back. The analogy I can think of to accurately compare myself to, is a powerful catapult. I was pulled down with weights that added on more and more, until one day I catapulted forward into the life I now have the privilege to live. Though I still struggle in many ways, it is the first time in my life that I am not on survival mode. It’s the first time in my life that I get to exist as a queer person who can enjoy life, build a friend group, establish deep connections with people. It’s also the first time I get to enjoy Pride as someone who is single and who has spent the past 18 months healing from my Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) and from my last relationship.

It was the first time in my life as a lesbian whose been out for over a decade, that I truly planned to enjoy Pride with my groups of friends.

While I was there this weekend, my internal battle started and I felt torn between celebrating my life and my queerness, and covering the ICE raid protests happening not too far from Sunset Blvd.

What I didn’t expect, was to see so many other people at Pride, completely oblivious and completely disconnected from the history of Pride, instead glorifying corporate brands and companies that have remained silent over LGBTQ issues, while others have gone as far as rolling back their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion motions.

If Marsha P. Johnson or Sylvia Rivera were there in that moment, they would have convinced us to merge our Pride celebration with the protests. They would have rallied us all to join forces and in the spirit of Pride, we would have marched for our immigrant community members, fighting for their right to due process.

I’m not sure if I made the right decision or not, but the next 60 days will say a lot about every single one of us. We will have to learn when to act, how to react and when to find pockets of joy to celebrate in, because those moments are also acts of resistance.

The Trump administration vowed to strip away rights and has made it their mission to incite violence, fear and anxiety among all working class, BIPOC and LGBTQ people, so it is important now more than ever to unite and show up for each other, whether you’re at a Pride celebration or a protest.

Juneteenth is coming up soon and I hope to see more of us rally around our BIPOC brothers, sisters and siblings to not only fight for our rights, but to continue celebrating ourselves and each other.

In the words of Marsha P. Johnson: “There is no pride for some of us, without liberation for all of us.”

The old scramble for Africa was about land, minerals, and control. The new scramble is cloaked in buzz phrases such as “promoting and protecting African family values,” “natural family,” and “defending the sanctity of the African family,” but it is driven by the same trio: capitalism, patriarchy, and neocolonialism. 

Across the African continent, violence against marginalized people, such as women, girls, and LGBTIQ+ people, is not just some unfortunate result of ignorance and intolerance. It is not a cultural misunderstanding. It is deliberate. It is precise. It is profitable. It is pro-hate legislation. It is ideologies. It is business and is being packaged, exported and sold under the glossy buzz phrases used by the same big global forces that have long treated Africa as an experimental lab, an extraction of resources and a playground with African lives. If we zoom out far enough to what looks like moral panic is actually a business model where patriarchy meets capitalism galvanized with extreme religious ideologies, leaving that familiar colonial aftertaste. 

Can ‘Ubuntu’ counter hate?

The anti-rights and anti-gender movement is sweeping rapidly across Africa on a mission to cement hate within African communities, thus making our nations and governments their experimental lab, as mentioned earlier. But we all know that hate is inherently un-African. It does not originate from Africa. It was exported onto our African soil through colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism.  

When I say that hate is un-African, this is not to claim that our communities — pre and post colonialism — were utopias. It really is to push back against the idea that supporting and protecting marginalized groups is foreign, and that rejecting them is somehow essential to preserving African culture. Protecting and empowering groups such as women and LGBTIQ+ destabilises the pillars of patriarchy and threatens capitalism, as there would be no market to sell refurbished colonialism. 

Africa is not immune to hate, but it is the result of intolerance and inequality that is being imported. Africa has long been a place of respecting diversity, and professor Sylvia Tamale describes it best in “Exploring the Contours of African Sexualities: Religion, Law and Power,” by alluding that “plurality is simultaneously the boon and the bane of Africa. The cultural diversity and richness found between and within the continent’s religious and cultural communities lend to its versatility and beauty.” Tamale reminds us that African diversity enriches and offers multiple intersectional ways of being, navigating the world, and living in community grounded in compassion and humanity — “Ubuntu!” 

In their article “Understanding Ubuntu and Its Contribution to Social Work Education in Africa and Other Regions of the World”, Mugumbate et al. explore the African philosophy of “Ubuntu” and its relevance to social work education. In taking lessons from their article, “Ubuntu” emphazises interconnectedness, compassion, and communal responsibility. The authors argue that integrating “Ubuntu” can be a weapon used to counter imported hate theories and practices. In our current climate, where anti-rights and anti-gender sentiments are gaining traction across Africa, the principles of “Ubuntu” are more pertinent than ever. It serves as a reminder of the importance of community and shared humanity, advocating for inclusive practices that uphold human rights and dignity for all individuals regardless of their social status, gender identity or sexual orientation.

In all honesty, there is money in hate and exclusion. This is evident in the anti-rights and anti-gender U.S. and European religious conservative organisations’ funding of anti-rights legislation, to supporting conferences where “protecting African values” is code for keeping white supremacy, protecting patriarchy and keeping colonial control. “We see a kind of investment that pays off in political influence and dominance. But who is really in control? African leaders or global north anti-rights and anti-gender groups?”

Anti-rights and anti-gender conservative groups, such as Family Watch International, La Manif Pour Tous and Alliance Defending Freedom have been linked to supporting laws that criminalize LGBTIQ+ identities, strengthening platforms that silence women and girls and manipulate African politicians, Presidents and first ladies who are eager for power, votes and validation. It is colonialism in high definition, backed by capitalism and masked as African traditional values. It is no different from Europe’s scramble for Africa in the 19th century, but this time, they are after our minds, bodies, rights and democracy. 

These are not random acts, they are coordinated crackdowns on humanity. From Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act to Ghana’s Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill to Namibia’s amended Marriage Act, we are seeing regressive legislation that is cut from the same hate cloth. Across Southern Africa, from Tanzania, Namibia, Malawi to Zambia, LGBTIQ+ people are being harassed, arrested, or killed. While human rights instruments, such as the Maputo Protocol, which protects women’s rights and bodily autonomy, have come under massive scrutiny by Family Watch International, possibly leaving the rights of women and girls at the mercy of these groups. What is even more saddening is that one can see African leaders mimicking hate sentiments that are being pushed by the global north’s anti-rights and anti-gender groups. “Do our leaders know that these hate groups are controlling them?” Some African leaders have adopted rhetoric that portrays women’s autonomy and LGBTIQ+ people as a threat to national identity and traditional values. But these sentiments are not rooted in African customs but are instead borrowed and repackaged from the anti-rights and anti-gender books. 

The 2025 anti-rights and anti-gender Africa tour

If you thought the colonial era was over, think again. Between May and October 2025, Africa is hosting a series of anti-rights and anti-gender convenings that are supported by US and European conservatives.

From May 9-11, the Ugandan parliament hosted the third Inter-Parliamentary Conference, which was supported by conservatives pushing the controversial African Charter on Family Values. The conference was attended by 29 African MPs, including the deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Zimbabwe. The second Pan-African Conference on Family Values, which was held in Kenya from May 12-17, convened African political leaders, policymakers, and religious leaders. The Africa Christian Professionals Forum organized the conference under the theme “Promoting and Protecting Family Values in Africa.” Attendees included representatives from the Supreme Court of Kenya.

In June 2025, Sierra Leone will host the seventh edition of the Strengthening Families Conference, an event endorsed by the first lady of Sierra Leone. Notable attendees include leaders from Cote d’Ivoire, Congo, Ghana, Gambia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal. The African Advocates Conference in Rwanda, funded by the U.S.-based Alliance Defending Freedom International, will take place from Aug. 12-17. Think of them as lawyers for oppression. The conference will host delegates from 43 African countries, including government officials, judges, academics, lawyers, and students. Advocates Africa has members from Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Finally, from Oct. 19-23, 2025, Ghana will host the Africa Bar Association Conference, a platform that pushes anti-feminist, anti-rights, and anti-gender narratives, under the guise of debating foreign interference.

These are not African-led spaces, they are U.S.- and European-led laboratories for exporting hate and mayhem. A global machine fueled by capitalism, patriarchy, and neocolonialism.

This article is part of the Southern Africa Litigation’s campaign around addressing hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation. #StopTheHate #TruthMatters

Bradley Fortuin is a consultant at the Southern Africa Litigation Center and a social justice activist.

In the weeks since Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” came out, there has been so much speculation about Joe Biden’s cognitive health that feels so pointlessly retrospective to me, or conveniently certain — even though I wouldn’t say I disagree fundamentally with what seems to have emerged as the consensus view.

Writing in POLITICO, James Kirchick took the Beltway reporters to task for what he argued was their (our) failure to investigate and cover the “truth” about the president’s mental acuity, as if the truth were a simple binary (is he okay?) and as if the answer was as evident at the time as it now appears with the benefit of hindsight.

“Lack of access is no excuse,” he wrote. I happen to disagree: Not only is that an excuse but it’s also a perfectly serviceable explanation.

We can report only what we know, and we can know only what we can observe with our own eyes and ears. If you happened to catch a White House press briefing in 2023 or 2024, there’s a pretty good chance you heard difficult questions about Biden’s health. When we don’t have much time with the president, we rely on the testimony of those in his inner circle who did.

And at this point I become agnostic on the question of whether there was a coverup by those closest to him or an effort to obfuscate the truth. Because even now the reality looks murky to me, and I was fortunate enough to spend more time with Biden than many of my colleagues near the end of his tenure in the White House.

As many of our readers will know, in September 2024 I had the great privilege of interviewing the president one on one across the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Biden was as attentive and engaged as anyone I’ve spoken with. When I reflect on the experience, I remember how blue his eyes looked and how electrifying it felt to have his gaze and focus fixed on me.

Part of that is charm and charisma, but I also think he took very seriously the opportunity to talk about his legacy of helping to advance the equality of queer people in America. He wanted to be there. He spoke clearly and from the heart.

The president came with a binder of talking points prepared by the press secretary and the communications director, but he barely glanced at the notes and needed assistance from his top aides only very briefly — on two moments when he stumbled over the name of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (specifically the “2025” part) and Karine Jean-Pierre spoke up to help him.

On the one hand, Project 2025 was a critical part of the messaging strategy of his and then his vice president’s 2024 campaign, and our conversation came at the tail end of the election cycle last year. On the other hand, considering the totality of my experience talking with Biden, looking back it doesn’t seem like those lapses were that big of a deal.

I guess what I am ultimately trying to say is this: I think we should extend some grace to the former president and those closest to him, and we should also have some humility because a lot of these questions about Biden’s cognitive health are unclear, unsettled, and even to some extent unknowable.

And another thing. I am grateful for the opportunity to interview him, for his years of public service, and for his unwavering defense of my community and commitment to making our lives better, safer, richer, healthier, happier. I pray for his recovery such that these words might come to describe not only his legacy in public life, but also his years beyond it. 

Christopher Kane is the Blade’s White House correspondent. Reach him at [email protected].