by Melanie Jamileh Prasad, General Counsel and Director of Policy
Last weekend, Los Angeles celebrated its annual Pride Parade, complete with corporate floats and rainbow-wrapped brands. But set against the terror that has been unfolding in our city, the pageantry and celebration felt disconnected and surreal.
On Friday night, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set up a full-scale operation two blocks from my home in Los Angeles. Helicopters circled overhead as dozens of unmarked vans, military vehicles, and countless agents stood at the ready. I stood helplessly on the sidelines as a mobile command post was established in the heart of my neighborhood.
And as the LAPD cracked down on protesters to protect ICE, deploying flashbangs and tear gas, I looked down the street and saw City Hall glowing in rainbow lights for Pride Month. A symbol of inclusion, cast in sharp contrast to the fear and violence unfolding just blocks away, where the government came not with aid, but with handcuffs. Not with support, but with force.
It is against this backdrop that I’m reminded of Pride’s roots.
Pride began as a riot. Not a rainbow celebration or a corporate-sponsored parade, but a spontaneous, collective uprising. In June 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn—led by trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, sex workers, street youth, and working-class queer people—rose up against the routine police raids that brutalized and dehumanized them. They weren’t seeking a place in a system built to erase them. They were fighting to survive, to be free. Pride was never just a parade; it was an act of collective defiance, a demand for liberation.
In the decades that followed, grassroots movements won hard-fought gains—expanding legal protections, increased visibility, and broader public support for LGBTQ+ rights. But then came the backlash, and today this struggle continues. Already this year, over 850 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across the U.S. These include efforts to ban gender-affirming care, restrict trans people’s access to public spaces, erase LGBTQ+ content from classrooms, and gut nondiscrimination protections in healthcare and employment. At the same time, a coordinated national campaign is dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
These attacks are not isolated; they are deeply intertwined with broader efforts to dismantle worker protections, suppress voting rights, terrorize immigrant communities, and criminalize free speech and protest. They are part of larger Trump administration authoritarian actions that concentrate power by targeting the most vulnerable, pitting communities against one another, and silencing collective resistance. To fight back, we must understand these struggles as interconnected and commit to building movements of solidarity across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and immigration status.
But if our struggles are interconnected, so is our power.
At Jobs to Move America, we organize to empower communities. Through enforceable community benefits agreements (CBAs), we fight to shift public dollars towards public good—creating good jobs with real worker protections, opening career pathways for people historically excluded from employment, and embedding accountability directly into contracts with employers.
Our CBA with New Flyer, the largest bus manufacturer in North America, includes protections against retaliation, independent discrimination complaint mechanisms, and targeted hiring for formerly incarcerated people, women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ workers. These kinds of agreements don’t just live on paper—they build real power in our communities, creating pathways for collective action, accountability, and change.
We know that safety doesn’t come from rainbow logos or military parades. It comes from organizing. From building worker power. From centering the leadership of queer and trans people of color, immigrants, people impacted by mass incarceration, and others who’ve always been on the front lines.
So this Pride, let’s honor its radical roots not with empty slogans and rainbow logos that disappear on July 1st, but with deep, sustained commitment. Let’s organize across race, class, gender, sexuality, and immigration status. Let’s reject symbolic gestures and demand structural change. Let’s recommit to organizing for dignity, for safety, and for a future where we all thrive.
Because when we organize together, we don’t just resist. We transform.