I guess not everybody loves a parade...

Pictured: a real hullabaloo.

I'm conflicted. Well, sure, aren't we all? But I'm conflicted about a specific thing. I went to SF Pride yesterday which is weird because it involved me driving San Francisco. Which I hate. Driving to San Francisco, not the city itself. Although I am a little conflicted about that too, not just the gentrification thing, although that's a big part of it, but the rigmarole that is trying to find a parking space there. It's all a lot of malarkey if you ask me. God, when did I become this person? Huh? Right...where was I? Pride.

I did get this blurry shot of
Kamala Harris...'s car. 

I saw the parade, well I saw the backs of people's heads and got the vague impression that there was a parade beyond. I could see the tops of wigs and hear the thumping bass, so I'm fairly confident that it was the Pride parade. What? I got there late. Anyway, while my friends and I were watching, it ground to a halt. Which is, you know, not how parades traditionally work. And it stayed stopped for like an hour. An hour! Can you believe it? Since we live in the future the answer has an internet search away and the news said that protesters were blocking the route.

Oh shit! Thought I. And my mind immediately conjured up images of MAGA hat goons, or anti-choice sign wavers or Proud Boys or some such nonsense but it was none of these things. Wait, do I owe them an apology?

No. Of course I don't. These are garbage people espousing garbage. If anything,
they should be apologizing to the rest of us. Also, that guy in the middle should
be running a craft brewery or selling razor kits on a podcast or something..

"We here at Wells Fargo celebrate your
 diversity or whatever. So do you want
 to open a checking account? Or what?"

-Wells Fargo

For lo, the protestors, it turned out, were pro-pride parade. They just had some issues with who was there. Yup, they were a protest double whammy. They'd blocked the street in opposition to both corporate participation in the parade and police presence at the parade. Pick one, right? Ok, but why those two things? Well, corporate participation is obvious. Corporations aren't there because they support the LGBTQ+ community. They're cold unfeeling gestalt entities whose sole raison d'être is the accumulation of returns for their shareholders.

So I'm with the protesters there, but police? I mean, the police are there to protect us from the unstable people Republicans keep insisting should have access to assault rifles. What's their beef with police?

Oh, right.

I know it's not all cops, we're talking
about a systemic problem with-look,
here's a cop reading to kids. Happy?

Yeah, that's my privilege. As in the kind I need to get better at checking. To me cops have historically been people who write me a ticket or someone we call when there's a shoplifter at work. I mean, they don't do anything about it, but they've never pulled a gun on me. So I'm neutral on cops? But for an alarmingly increasing number of Americans, that's not the case what with all the police shootings and areforgoddamnserious acquittals for said shootings. For a lot of people police interactions are negative at best, potentially fatal at worst.

Ok, that's a little better.

Also, there's a kind of uncomfortable irony that comes along with a police presence at an event that marks the Stonewall Riots. According to SF Gate one of the be-megaphoned protestors said:

"The system of policing upholds white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, gender binaries and capitalist rule..."

-Someone with a mega phone,

in need of a catchier slogan

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I'm conflicted about this. I have to side with the victims of police brutality, but I would also like to not live in a lawless dystopia. I mean, the obvious question is "So what do we do if we need the police at Pride?" Which, while also the smartass response to all this by like, half of twitter right now, is a valid question when you're not being a dick about it. And I don't know if anyone has the answer. Blocking the parade isn't it, but then 'shut up and get out of the street, there's a parade coming!' is also not the solution to the problem of rampant police brutality. So like I said, conflicted!

Normally I'd be loath to side with people making
the traffic in San Francisco worse but, here we are.

And here's a fun fact, did you know it's illegal to block a parade route? Like, there's a specific law against it. I learned that today as one of the protesters was charged with 'blocking a parade route.' Who knew?