Dance Party Manifesto

Taken from a comment on the Line Out story. The commenter said this was published on indymedia but I couldn't find it:

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These kids wanted to put the "punk" back in "punctuality" so they promptly began at 11:55pm. The first song was by Michael Jackson, the crowd of for than 250 people went crazy. They were kicking up dust and yelling. They had been enduring a costly, corporate 21+ pride for two whole nights, this was there moment, their time to shine.

Someone climbed to the top of the hill and asked the DJ to stop. "It's midnight motherfuckers! Stonewall was a queer and trans riot and it happened 40 years ago as of right now! Maybe you didn't know Pride is supposed to be celebrating that moment in our history, Budweiser doesn't include that on the banners they have all over the place. Fuck 21+ venues, fuck covers, fuck corporate Pride. This moment is yours, its ours!"

Dolly Parton blasted and everyone cheered. We did it, we really did it.

At the other end of the parking lot two cars had called the cops because of a minor wreck. The cop who was taking that report had been watching the goings-on and called for backup. The parking lot where a queer bar called Pony used to be suddenly got the Swine Flu as more and more cop cars showed up and began shining their lights on the crowd. The queers were not phased, they danced harder, used to the things they value being threatened by the systems that are supposed to protect them.

After five songs and much "you need to leave the parking lot" talk, the cops approached the speaker where the music was coming from. The DJ calmly unplugged his music player and walked away has he had been instructed. One person grabbed the cords connecting the device and disappeared into the crowd. The queer in charge of the power source flew into action and had everything in his bag in a matter of seconds. The kid who needed to take one part of the sound system ran with it clutched to their chest, ridding away in car. All of this took seconds to happen. These well prepared folx had their shit on lock and the cops were too slow to stop them.

The woman in charge of getting the speaker that was providing sound was carrying it away. The cops grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back, she screamed, witnesses saw the cops hand come down hard on the woman's back. Another cop was shaking a man by his jacket screaming, "I've worked for 12 hours and don't have to deal with this shit!". The cops had pushed the large crowd out of the parking lot by now. Cops yelled hilarious things like, "There's still time to drink, go back to the bars!". Some of the crowd had disappeared leaving only 150 people to chant things like, "give us back our speaker!", "up the punks!", "fuck corporate pride", "out of the bars and into the streets".

One man was arrested, a cop claiming he had keyed his car. The man's room mate was with him the entire night, "He was standing with me, he didn't key anything. He was standing there and then he was gone." People quickly formed a group around supporting the man until he got out on bail.

Last nights guerrilla dance party showed two things, that queers now how to throw a fucking party and that we're only allowed to celebrate Pride if a large company profits from our gatherings. But the cops came too late, we had proved to ourselves and others that queers don't need to be backed by a corporate sponsor in order to commemorate the queer and trans folx who came before us and made the shit we do daily possible. The folx at Stonewall would have been proud of us and recognized what we were doing because they did it themselves, last night we made the world we wanted to see.
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