This year, Pride celebration organizers across the country faced a new challenge: the loss of longtime corporate sponsors. Under mounting political pressure and federal attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, brands that once flaunted rainbow logos every June have now withdrawn support — turning their backs on the communities they once claimed to champion.
What’s left? A movement forced to confront the aftermath of conditional allyship.
While some may see this wave of corporate defunding as a setback, it also offers an opportunity to refocus on the original purpose of the movement. Pride was never meant to be a marketing campaign — it was born out of resistance, and in the face of renewed hostility, these roots matter now more than ever.
Pride demonstrations started as protests, not parades. The first were the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a retaliation against years of prejudicial harassment following a police raid on a gay bar in New York City. This marked the start of modern Pride, as activists commemorated the anniversary of Stonewall with America’s first organized “Gay Pride” march in June 1970.
As Pride has grown in visibility and scale, so has corporate involvement. But with brands now withdrawing support for the movement, Pride event organizers face funding deficits as large as $300,000. These losses directly threaten funding that typically covers security and free public admission, forcing some cities to scale back events rather than compromise safety and accessibility.
Still, organizers cannot afford to let these challenges slow momentum. The message is clear: canceling Pride is not an option. Instead, communities are adapting, turning to local small business partnerships and private donors to help cover the funding gap. Some grassroots initiatives have already raised thousands of dollars.
A silver lining has also emerged close to home: thanks to a new sponsor vetting process, Boston Pride remained largely unaffected by corporate cutbacks. This vetting system takes investment history into account, intentionally declining offers from companies linked to anti-LGBTQ+ agendas. As a result, Boston Pride does not depend on the unreliable brands now pulling back their support. Boston’s resilience is an important reminder: commodification at the expense of integrity undermines the very values that Pride hinges on.
These successes do offer hope, but an abundance of body glitter, handheld fans and parade floats will not put a stop to the threats infecting our political landscape. I am not ignorant of the fragility of our circumstances nor a stranger to the feeling of powerlessness.
However, I am also aware of the profound impact of Pride events, big and small, to unite and empower.
I grew up in an “idyllic” suburb akin to a conveyor belt: mass-producing one societally approved mold after another, each polished and predictable with little room for deviation. I came to understand my queerness as a fact, a simple truth to be neither uplifted nor concealed. While I was never surrounded by hostile attitudes, my community was quiet. There was no bigotry, but there was also no visibility. Without queer role models or discussions about identity and belonging, open individuality was a completely foreign concept.
I didn’t understand what I had been missing until attending my first Pride parade two summers ago. Though the details of that day have grown hazy, the weight of every emotion remains fresh. Joy. Relief. Acceptance. An afternoon of pure catharsis, where identity was not just tolerated, but celebrated. In a world that struggles to embrace difference, Pride offers a glimpse of what true belonging and community feel like.
Today, this atmosphere remains as important as ever: Pride was never built on convenience, and it won’t crumble in the absence of corporate backing. The authenticity of this space — built by and for queer people — shines in contrast to the sanitized versions packaged into brand campaigns. If anything, this moment strips Pride back to its core: a celebration of identity, a strengthening of community and, above all, an act of resistance.
As legislative attacks on queer liberation continue and the storm cloud threatening to obscure LGBTQ+ visibility looms closer, it becomes all the more meaningful to create opportunities to dance in the rain. We owe our continued commitment and presence to queer youth growing up under an administration that treats their existence as a problem to be solved, not a life to celebrate. We owe it to the older members of our community, who must endure yet another era of hostility after marching, fighting and paving the way with resilience. We owe it to those who lack the safety or support to live freely, only seeing their identities represented with dignity and pride one month each year. We owe it to everyone who has felt the paralyzing whiplash of watching hard-won progress unravel, the window of opportunity and equality shattered by the nation’s most powerful voices. And we owe it to all who have known both the ache and beauty of becoming.
As corporations back down, their silence is a stark reminder that true allyship is not abandoned when it becomes inconvenient. Regardless of which brands continue to wave the rainbow flag and which retreat under pressure, Pride has never been and — will never be — a marketing opportunity. It began as a form of resistance, and that is what it will remain.
Taylor Zinnie is a second-year criminal justice and psychology combined major. She can be reached at [email protected].
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