This Organization Wants You To Remember The Radical Roots of Pride

While you're running around parades and parks trying to nab that perfect shirtless selfie this Pride season, one organization wants you to remember the roots of the annual celebration. Breakthrough, a creative human rights organization that uses media and art to change cultural norms, launched Wednesday their #QueerYourPride campaign as an effort to remind and challenge LGBTQ+ folk not forget from whence we came.

"While we celebrate Pride, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall resistance, it's easy to forget that Pride is also an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the freedom struggle," said Darnell Moore, Breakthrough's head of programs and strategy. "So, #QueerYourPride is our contribution to that work."

The campaign centers on a five-minute video featuring members of our community as they reflect on what Pride means to them, and where the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement has to go. It includes artist and model Mojo Disco, model and actor Ta'Lor D'Yonna Mosley, makeup artist Chris Tabassi, poet Staceyann Chin, actor/drag performer Bear Spiegel, and mental health advocate Yolo Akili.

"Pride means freedom," Disco says in the video. "Freedom means letting go of all the baggage, the chains, and the trauma, and living your authentic truth."

Tabassi added: "Pride represents a whole encompassing celebration of self, of identity, of love."

Of the organization, Moore says their "work is centered on uplifting the stories of those who exist on the edges of the margins. We feature LGBTQIA+ people and elevate the issues impacting the lives of LGBTQIA+ people in every aspect of our creative works."

Check out the video above, and find out more about Breakthrough here.

RELATED | How Sylvia Rivera Created the Blueprint for Transgender Organizing