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As the summer sun returns to the valley, members of Salt Lake's queer community prepares for our annual festivities. And I confront yet again the perennial question: Why do we come together every June?

To be sure, Pride is an opportunity for queer people to celebrate our beauty and creativity — but above all it is about strength. Neither our beauty nor our creativity kept police from harassing and unfairly arresting us 50 years ago at the Stonewall Inn — it was Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman with a brick.

In April, Trans Queer Pueblo disrupted the Phoenix Pride parade, calling on the sponsoring organization to push for the protection of undocumented immigrants from police and state violence. If Pride aims to include and support queer people, that support has to include queer undocumented folks. Anything less is a failure to uphold their mission statement.

Yet the issues run far deeper than a parade. After the disruption, Phoenix Pride lamented that TQP did not present their concerns sooner so they could be addressed in advance, despite a series of meetings in 2015 to address such unacknowledged concerns. If Pride has not made progress in two years, why should TQP remain compliant?

In 2015, a group of local queer and trans Latinx organizers approached the Utah Pride Center to discuss areas to improve their outreach and support for Latinx communities. A primary concern was the lack of Spanish on the UPC website. Pride Center staff expressed concern and promised to address the issue. Two years later, the website remains exclusively in English.

How are people supposed to believe that these organizations support individuals?

How can white queer groups claim solidarity with marginalized communities while prioritizing the optics of one citywide event over the needs of those very individuals?

When our Pride Festival is a celebration of corporate success and assimilation into a dominant white culture that actively violates the economic justice and liberation of communities of color, we have failed. When a room full of white queer people can agree without hesitation that the police should lead the parade, failing to recognize the ways in which police actively target people of color and represent symbols of violence and danger rather than safety and protection, we have failed. When our march for justice recreates white supremacist structures and we refuse to listen when that fact is acknowledged, we have failed. When we write off the concerns of people who are marginalized in many different ways, members of our community because we have not personally encountered them, we have failed.

Some frustration stems from the emphasis placed on Pride. I would be inclined to agree — many queer and trans people face pressing issues such as homelessness, job insecurity and inadequate healthcare just to name a few. This burden falls disproportionately on queer and trans people of color. And I would be hard pressed to find an example of the Pride Center or other large queer-oriented organizations working to address those issues systemically.

When we preach solidarity once a year then fail to show up when it's needed — we have gravely failed.

Forty-four years ago, gay liberation and transgender activist Sylvia Rivera scolded a crowd of white gay men for abandoning their incarcerated transgender siblings for membership in a "white middle class … club." These men booed her as she advocated for the most needy in her community. Why is standing with the marginalized always a radical proposition?

Many people's lives have improved since the days of Marsha and Sylvia, and Pride should be a place for us to celebrate that progress. But when that celebration is used to silence those in our community who are still suffering, we ought to reexamine our goals.

So I ask you, why are you coming to Pride? What are you celebrating? What is your goal for this year? My goal is to celebrate the strength, beauty and creativity of my community; to experience the love and support of the transcendent individuals I call family; and to remind everyone that we have a lot of healing to do.

Dylan Ashley is a local queer and trans organizer with the 1 to 5 Club, a program of the Utah Pride Center, which seeks to dismantle systems of oppression through community building, self-exploration and mutual aid.