A quarter of all corporate sponsors of the annual New York City Pride parade have announced that they’re going to be withdrawing and dialing down their contributions, according to a recent report from The New York Times. Their reasoning? Fear of losing money, and fear that the Trump administration will go after them.
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When counter-protesters showed up, they were met with a heavy police presence.
While many corporations are saying this is solely due to economic reasons – a statement echoed by Kevin Kilbride, a spokesman for the event producer Heritage of Pride, in The Times report – others express skepticism that financial logistics are the sole motivation.
Fabrice Houdart, executive director of the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors, said to the Times that he finds it “very difficult to believe this is about the economic context. One thing that is striking about the conversations I have had over the past few months is there are a lot of companies saying ‘I won’t engage on anything L.G.B.T.-related because I don’t want to find myself being a target.’”
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These decisions are far from new. For nearly a year, dozens of corporations have announced that they’re scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, often in direct response to far-right harassment campaigns.
And yet, these decisions are made despite recent data from the Human Rights Campaign suggesting that these rollbacks are costly to these companies’ bottom line in the long-term.
“These decisions to pull back have been underway for almost two years now,” said Matt Skallerud, President of LGBTQ+ marketing firm Pink Media, to The New York Times. “A lot of bigger companies are taking a back seat because they are afraid to be boycotted from either the left or the right.”
In response, New York City Pride organizers will likely be joining tactics seen by many other Pride organizers across the country – reliance on grassroots fundraising. According to organizers involved in the Twin Cities People’s Pride event, one entirely independent of corporate donations, grassroots fundraising is often able to quickly match and exceed that provided by corporate donors.
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