Chelsea Manning: Whistleblower on San Francisco Pride

The view “No Pride in the slaughter of others” has been a cutting edge in recent queer politics at least since the start of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. LGBTQ people were visible for the first time in the occupation armies sent by the U.K. and the United States, a move welcomed by some—but certainly not all—as a victory for LGBTQ liberation. But as Queer Strike said at numerous anti-war protests, “how can we celebrate when women, children, and men are being bombed and murdered—just because it’s done by an integrated military!” It’s a cause for mourning, not celebration.

Chelsea Manning’s heroic acts of conscience confirmed this, saving countless lives. It’s no accident that first as an out gay man and later as a trans woman, Chelsea felt herself an “outsider” in the military. Because she was not prepared to ignore what she learned about the horror and the pain of all those considered “outsiders” as “collateral damage,” she refused to be complicit just because it was her job. As she said: “If the public, particularly the American public, had access to this information . . . it might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counterterrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day . . . I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”

Leaking the truth as she did heightened the power of grassroots movements against war and devastation, starting with the movements of resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and other places under occupation. No one today can claim they “didn’t know” what was happening, thanks to her and WikiLeaks. Yet the LGBTQ movement was not quick to respond in support of her extraordinary courage and determination.

Over a year after Chelsea was arrested and despite the almost 10 months of torture in solitary confinement in Quantico—against which many, including grassroots LGBTQ individuals and groups, were furiously organizing—there was still a deafening silence among establishment/high profile LGBTQ and anti-war organizations. These organizations refused to speak out in her defense, and the mainstream LGBTQ media (at least in the United States and the U.K.) barely acknowledged that Chelsea existed. Yet at the grassroots, many LGBTQ individuals and groups were actively mobilizing in her support. Challenging this whiteout and hoping to mobilize more support, Queer Strike and Payday men’s network issued an open letter to the LGBTQ movement, urging people to take action:

That LGBTQ organizations and press have ignored [her] case is particularly outrageous in the US, where many such “representatives” of the LGBTQ community campaigned ardently for repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against gay men and lesbian women serving openly in the US military, in effect championing our “equal right to kill.” Why are they not going all out to defend a gay brother’s right to refuse to kill? Why is [Chelsea] not being championed publicly as our gay hero, splashed all over the LGBTQ press to mobilize urgent support to get [her] released!

(June 2011)

There was no response. But two years later, on April 8, 2013 (with Chelsea’s trial just two months away), everything changed when Chelsea Manning was nominated as grand marshal of San Francisco Pride by Joey Cain, former president of San Francisco Pride. Manning was one of four nominees, and won the election with the highest vote. The board of San Francisco Pride confirmed her appointment and the full slate of grand marshals, including Manning, was announced in the Bay Area Reporter (the major LGBTQ newspaper in San Francisco). But the president of the SF Pride Board, Lisa Williams, rejected the nomination. Whether Williams did it unilaterally or the whole board did it together has been kept secret. Not a single member of the 10-member Board has been willing to disclose what happened. A press release posted on San Francisco Pride’s website quoted Williams saying

. . . even the hint of support for actions which placed in harm’s way the lives of our men...