Letter to Editor of San Francisco Chronicle About OccuPride and Wells Fargo

Stardust sent this letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, which has not yet been printed:

At the 2012 San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade, thousands cheered the OccuPride occupation of the Wells Fargo Bank float. Forty spirited Occupy activists from Occupy SF, Occupy Bay Area United, ACCE, and Occupy Bernal leapt the barricades to celebrate LGBT freedom and protest bank abuses.

We – LGBT and straight folks of many ethnicities and foreclosure and eviction fighters battling Wells to save their homes – chanted with parade spectators along the parade route to let Wells know what we think about predatory lending and greedy, discriminatory foreclosures that trash vulnerable communities: “Stop foreclosures, save our homes!”, “Happy Pride! Take your money out… of Wells Fargo!”

LGBT liberation pioneers like Harvey Milk refused to sell our rights to the highest corporate bidder. Harvey led the fight for an end to racism and sexism, and against greedy landlords, housing speculators, anti-union bosses, and discriminatory corporations like Coors. We marched in his footsteps, and for his and our demands.

OccuPride led with a demand of the 99%: “Community not commodity!” Wells and the other 1%-ers think they own us, our country, our economy, and our political system. They think we’ll let them throw our neighbors out of our neighborhoods. We let them know loud and clear that we won’t.