In the last weekend of June, communists from the Twin Cities Club and the Minnesota-Dakotas District CPUSA participated in three pride events: People’s Pride – an anti-capitalist, anti-cop, popular event; Taking Back Pride – a protest and march against corporations and cops at the official Twin Cities pride festival and march; and finally Twin Cities Pride itself – the oldest pride event with hundreds of thousands of attendees. We in the party club and district choose to attend all three, even with their semi-antagonistic relationships, to reach the broadest masses of queer and LGBTQ+ people at these events. This gives us plenty of opportunities for outreach and recruitment, as our club must improve in terms of gender ratio and the number of non-cishet members in membership and leadership. Pride is a valuable coalition building activity, with multiple other socialist, left, and single-issue organizations present and open to collaboration.

As one club member described his experience, “It was incredibly rewarding to learn about the issues that mattered most to people and to meet individuals with diverse life experiences and perspectives. The event was a great opportunity for us to grow our club and party, as we had over 100 people sign up expressing their interest.”

The Communist Party, over its 104 year history, has what has been described as a “two-track” history with queer people and their liberatory movements. On the one side there was historically a practice of homophobia and transphobia of the 50s – 90s., On the other side, multiple major queer liberatory activists graduated from the educational and organizational experiences of the Communist Party. The tendency of radicalization by marginalized groups including LGBTQ people is why they have significant involvement in the party, even if the party did not yet promote their rights.

Prior to the 2000s, “The gay liberation movement was dismissed as bourgeois decadence, and homosexuals were included on lists of ‘people whom we don’t recruit.’” In a reflection of the Party’s general historical trend to follow global communist parties in regards to social issues, the Party had not yet developed its own concrete and progressive position on queer people, and instead trailed behind the reactionary social positions of the working class and the world communist movement, the CPSU in particular.

The 2005 party convention saw the party begin to recognize and look back upon the history of queer folk, engage in self criticism, and took the position of the necessity to promote their rights and liberation as part of the socialist cause. In more recent years, in 2022 the National Committee passed a resolution on transgender liberation which concluded that the Party should fight against transphobia in all forms, and fight for the passing of the Equality Act, making illegal discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity. Overall, the current position of the party is as Queer and Trans people make up a group suffering “special oppression” outside and in addition to the basic class oppression that workers face under capitalism. In taking this position, the liberation of queer folk must be achieved and can be achieved through socialism.

With this background in struggle within the party around LGBTQ+ issues over the past decades, the Party now strongly stands for queer liberation. Attending regular pride events as a club is one expression of our support. Saturday, June 29th saw the 4th annual People’s Pride celebration and festival in Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis, the first of three pride events we attended. People’s Pride, as described by their organizers, has the mission of “divesting from corporations/cops and committing to the safety and joy of queer people in Minneapolis.” In practice, this meant a liberatory atmosphere, free from both cops and corporations, with queer vendors selling art and clothing, and popular events such as queer wrestling, all being COVID-conscious with a mutual aid organization providing free masks for all attendees. Setting up and manning our booth at people’s pride, with our party flag waving proudly in the wind (the same wind which gave us many problems with literature flying away), was a great experience for our club members in attendance. Throughout the day, we experienced only positive reactions, with over 50 people signing up to our mailing list requesting more information about our Party and club. We later found that the Communist Party was the only major left organization (besides a few mutual aid collectives) to attend this festival, a source of pride in our work.

In addition to attending People’s Pride, our Party attended the original Twin Cities Pride festival and march, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022. We were ultimately there for both days of the whole event. Over the weekend organizers from the DSA as well as other mass and community organizations visited our booth, and we had some good and productive conversations, opening doors to future collaboration and solidarity work.

We received very positive reception with only occasional weariness. Many people who came up were eager for change, and were interested in getting more involved, signing up to our mailing list and taking our party info cards. Many others were at least interested in what we had to say, either asking us questions or taking some Party pamphlets. Party literature was so popular we eventually ran out before the end of the event. Over the weekend no one came to argue with us, and at most we received glares or open-ended questions on socialist countries or Russia.

On the second day of Pride we attended the Taking Back Pride march, a protest against corporate co-opting of pride, cops at pride, capitalism and for Palestine. A few of our members attended, marching with our banner and party flag. There were around ~100 people in attendance, with FRSO and their front organizations being the main groups leading the march. We marched along the same route as the Twin Cities pride march in front of them, disrupting their parade. This did lead to some boos and threats from the sidelines, but many in the crowds chanted along with us and shouted in support of our calling for a free Palestine and against police violence. Once the march reached the pride festival, it led a disruption of the Target, National Guard, and FBI (!) booths, and occupied the main stage for a few hours.

Overall, a total of 110 people across People’s Pride and TC-Pride signed up to either join or request information and get on the mailing list. These impressive numbers by far exceeded our expectations. It also indicated several things about our Party and organizing. For one, it displays the Party’s Twin Cities Club’s potential for growth. Secondly, it shows that many people in our area, in Minnesota and especially the Twin Cities are very much open to leftist ideas, socialism, Marxism, and recognize the need for change and liberation. This was especially the case with Pride focusing on people of marginalized identities who have been radicalized by the repressive capitalist system.

If even a fraction of these people who’ve signed up or taken business cards apply to join the party and get vetted in, it will significantly improve the gender ratio and non-cis population in the club. Regardless it’s important we continue to show up to future events surrounding progressivism or marginalized communities to build our clubs influence and support.

Our work through Pride weekend was a clear display of our capabilities as a club and our ability to flex organizational muscles, attending 3 events within 2 days. This demonstrated the power of our organization and our ability to responsibly divide tasks to achieve formidable results. Our capacity for such organizing work will grow as our club and district grows. Additionally, we gained further connections with other organizations, such as Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid, and a greater comradely relationship with DSA that has opened new doors for future events, coalitions, and party strategy.

Our conclusion is that this event was overall a great investment, moving the needle for the party, with lessons learned for future events. This demonstrates the worth of considering increased investment for similar initiatives in the future. What this endeavor achieved was becoming a statistic indicative of party growth, as well as emblematic of the performance capabilities of the Twin Cities Club and Minnesota-Dakotas District.