On the 9th of June, the annual parade now called "Capitol Pride," brought out people as far as the eye could see around Dupont Circle. Again cops and politicians were allowed to lead a parade commemorating the military victory over the NYPD vice squad at Stonewall June 28,1969. This time at least, there were fewer blatant corporate floats, with the notorious exception of Wells Fargo Bank's giant stagecoach.

"Traditional" Pride contingents were still too few in number, but none the less made a solid turnout. There were the sexy contingents from the few clubs left in town that survived the Great Baseball Purge, there were drag contingents and a Free Bradley Manning contingent as well as the ACLU and ANSWER.

Scantily clad men and women were in attendance but not in the numbers of 20 years ago, I stripped down to just my shorts to add to this total.

In a Pride tradition, when the last contingent of the parade passed the crowd took to the streets to follow.


The following day (not on video, I found out about it after the fact), a small contingent of protesters went after Wells Fargo's booth at the Pride Festival, generating this report:

Quick update from Anti Wells-Fargo action today at the Pride Fest:
People chanted and threw streamers, dressed as pirates. One persyn was arrested because somebody from WF didn't see anything happen and was just mad that their corporate presence was being questioned. During the event and in the aftermath dealing with the cops one of the people who was working for Wells-Fargo was being quite thuggish and was trying to goad people into starting a fight and was pushing people a bit and getting rather nasty and violent. They were a rather well built darker skinned dude if they weren't been being such an asshole and so nasty towards protesters they might have been some fun. He wasn't wearing any of the Wells-Fargo gear and was probably just a hired thug to harass people.

Also as of note the FBI and CIA had tables at Pride.