Comments

1
Why not follow the lead of the Fremont Solstice parade?

* No written or printed words or logos
* No motorized vehicles (except wheelchairs)
* No real weapons or fire
2
Guns are a big part of pride.
3
Do they have any citations for the claim that plastic beads are "made by the hands of children"? I find it very difficult indeed to imagine plastic beads being made by the hands of anyone at all; I suspect they come streaming out of some sort of enormous machine.

I know it's fun to assume that Chinese manufacturing is Stone Age stuff, but the truth is, it's considerably more advanced than American manufacturing in most cases; and modern plants are likely to be operated by very productive modern workers, not children. Similarly, people like to talk about gypsum in the milk from China, but China's food production controls are in many cases superior to ours. American industrial food is far more likely to have spent time standing in heaps on filthy concrete floors that haven't been cleaned since 1950, for instance.
4
"Trucks spewing carbon, holding our community leaders (and some near naked muscle boys), could be replaced by people-powered floats, showing off our creativity."

If the floats were pulled by the near naked muscle boys, that would be really......creative!
5
3-- I'll agree with you that the processes are probably far more advanced than US, but I really don't think Chinese labor is peachy. Perhaps we should educate those muscle boys that they're extra-cool iPhones/iPads are made in Foxconn prison camps--where they've recently installed nets to prevent worker suicide--and 400 hour work months (that's where productivity comes from). This type of consumerism also exploits the ethnic cleansing of non-Han populations.

Also, I want to see every near naked muscle boy with a gun.
6
Ok I know I will get in trouble for this and I know it is a tradition but… How about getting the seemingly endless circling of the Dykes on Bykes (seeing them once is a tradition the ∞ number of times they ride by is just toxic and boring) to be shorter and/or bicycle powered?
7
Why stop at Pride? There are plenty of citywide events that could green up their act. For example, take a harder look at the next marathon that passes through town and witness all the non-recyclable garbage it produces, in addition to all the mini water bottles, post-run plastic warm-ups, and printed promo materials passed out, plus the vinyl advertising banners hung with plastic zip-ties everywhere.
8
How about solar stills on the back end of the Honey Buckets to provide a continuous flow of drinking water?
9
@5, you mean...prison labor...like BP is using to clean up the Gulf? All black men, BTW. Prison labor like 37 states contract out to private employers?
10
Has anyone seen the disgusting mess block party makes of Capitol Hill every year? Who cleans up all the plastic beer cups?
11
9 - touche, definitely not defending the US/west, whose colonialism is more than responsible for what has transpires in China
12
Oh, all right, @2; good one.

Guns and other unnatural bulges.
13
This ain't Folsom, @8
14
to be honest I havn't seen this documentary myself...but a friend mentioned it and its contents..'mardi gras:made in china', which specifically deals with the mardi gras type beads. it isn't a bad idea to reflect on how wasteful we are with all this stupid crap anyway. a book i have read about our reckless abandon with disposable products is 'gone tomorrow: the hidden life of garbage' by heather rogers..i warn you it might make you nuts!
15
The clean up efforts post-Pride at Seattle Center should make anyone's head explode. I witnessed it the Monday after last year. A Center employee was trying to move trash around with a leaf blower. To make it a true dumbfuck moment, he kept turning the leaf blower into the wind, causing the trash to come flying back at him. After about 20 minutes, he gave up.
16
Mardi Gras: Made in China was a hell of a movie.
I can't not think of it whenever I see beads.

Horrifying stuff.
17
Apropos of which, I found myself thinking "All right, sister" yesterday hearing Annette Bening's anti-green, anti-composting tirade in "The Kids Are All Right".

But these thoughts must remain unspoken because in Seattle you can be nailed to a cross of dead hollyhocks for expressing such heresy. Maybe we should all just be outfitted with Green colostomy litter bags for our out-and-about forays into society.

In most of the last half of the 20th century, NO ONE carried plastic water bottles ubiquitously as if they were planning a day long trek across the Mojave Desert; yet few citizens died of thirst going about their daily affairs. Jesus' fifth saying from the Cross was "I thirst" - now there was a man who needed a water bottle. The rest of you - not so much!
18
@14, OK, there's my citation. I stand corrected, in part -- not made by children, precisely, but definitely made in unpleasant conditions (docked a day's pay for talking on the shop floor). Beads are bad.
19
@6 Umm, yeah... you go ahead and try convincing the dykes to ride bicycles instead of motorcycles.

Good luck with that.
20
I like plastic beads, floats powered by engines, and water bottles.

Srzly, my daughter and I came to the Pride parade and forgot to bring water bottles with us, so we were very happy that one float was passing some around.

People powered floats works for the Fremont Parade - but that parade is a whole lot different than anything else. It also lacks floats as most groups just choose to walk. If you want to cut down on carbon, make sure more viewers and participants have ways to get to and from the parade without their personal vehicle. Don't worry about the miniscule amount of exhaust from a float.
21
@11, the US never colonized China. And China is the leading economic colonial power in the world today. You should see what they're up to in Africa, while we futz around with useless aid and even more useless WTO/World Bank incompetence.
22
The environment is not going down because of a few dykes on bikes circling around. The problem we have is our reliance on oil for every single thing we do in life. A few token changes here and there are not going to change anything.

The environmental issues we face have to be solved by regulation and investment into alternative energies. Relying on the guilt of a small group of people to lower their impact won't work/
23
teh gays hate the environment, ask Dan Savage's boyfriend who wants to run us cyclists over....I can imagine there are quite a few more people like him on capitol hill that can't stand us....they might as well just come out honestly and make us fully aware of their disinterest in preserving the planet.
24
This year, T.O. pride had both recycling bins and compost bins, but since so many of the participants weren't locals, things were mostly put in the wrong containers. I don't know that it helped much.
25
I definitely second the proposal for no motor-powered floats. How about no [crappy beer]-sponsoring either. The Dykes on Bikes are a thing, so leave them. Motorcycles don't use nearly as much fuel as the flat-bed trucks anyway. Plus, trucks don't have the exhaust filtering that normal cars do, so worse air for the parade-viewers. Plastic beads are just dumb anyway.
26
It's one thing to have motors for the floats, but why does every third group need to have several cars? I know there are participants that can't walk that far, but they could definitely take a cue from Fremont and have someone pull or push them in something human-powered. I would hate to see all the floats go away, but there's no need for every church, politician, and store to have a damn car or six sitting idling in the parade all day long. Either make a creative float or go human-powered.

And I vote for paper flower leis instead of beads. Recycled paper, of course, I don't want the Green Taliban issuing a fatwa on my ass.
27
"[irresponsibly giving the mic to] Green Gays that just want to tell people what to do, but not help to do it."

Is that really what he said to you, Eli? Once again we see how absolutely feckless - nay, worthless! - Seattle Out and Proud (and their fearless leader, Mr. Gauthier) are.

Rather than focus his energy on making changes his constituency would obviously(!) be supportive of, Gauthier makes excuses, gets pissy, and slings mud at the community his organization claims to represent. Someone get this joker a clue! Maybe he wouldn't get nasty articles (and comments like this) written about him if he acted out of more than his own self-absorbed interest in maintaining his perception of control and power. Small Dick Syndrome, anyone?
28
21-that's why i said the US / west.
29
@23 The Gays don't hate environmentalists...we hate cyclists and are happy to run you down in our fabulous cars after you slalom past us while walking to the salon, hit us in the crosswalks while you were running a red light or clipped our dogs while walking them on Alki. You people will one day learn that we do fight back.
30
pheeeew!crack!boom!: Not sure who you are, but if you have something to say, why don't you come out of hiding from a BLOG with a fake name, and contact SO&P yourself to get the real story and find out what is going on before you sling mud yourself. You know nothing about me, or my leadership. Feel free to contact me at egauthier@seattlepride.org.
-Eric Gauthier

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