Rising Attacks, Declining Resources, But Pride Remains

June’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month should be a time for celebration. Instead, communities around the world are facing intense attacks and attempts to drive them back into the closet – or worse.

A new report released this June by the Global Philanthropy Project (GPP) highlights this dire reality. Their 2023–2024 Global Resources Report: Government and Philanthropic Support for LGBTI Communities is a product of examining over 19,000 grants to over 7,700 organizations.

Not only are trans and other queer peoples facing criminalization, as recent bills and laws in Ghana, across the US, and elsewhere have done. Communities and social movements are seeing philanthropy and governments pull back funding just as these attacks have increased.

Compared to 2021-2022, funding to LGBTQ+ organizations declined globally by five percent, driven largely by a twenty-four percent  drop in funding inside the US. In fact, LGBTQ+ movement funding increased by twenty percent outside the US – though it still remains a tiny drop in the overall landscape of global philanthropic and governmental funding.

For every 100 dollars foundations provide globally, only 33 cents goes to LGBTQ+ work. For every 100 dollars governments around the world spend in grants to organizations, only four cents goes to LGBTQ+ ones.

In a context of rising attacks and declining financial support, how are movements responding? And what should those of us who walk (or want to walk) beside these movements do?

Making Connections, Challenging Oppression

Just as the slogan “Pride started as a riot” recognizes, movements for LGBTQ+ liberation have long been criminalized and been pushed to the “outs” of many societies. But to tackle this particular context, these particular attacks, has required heightened strategy and steadfastness.

Mutual aid has become more prominent to help LGBTQ+ communities survive the attacks. Moving beyond individual social media fundraisers for individuals facing homelessness and healthcare costs, movements are helping to reframe mutual aid as collective care and protection. If governments can’t be relied upon, or worse are perpetrating harm, only by coming together in solidarity can we protect and care for ourselves.

But survival is just one piece. Movements have importantly recognized that the right wing’s scapegoating of LGBTQ+ people is directly tied to the broader rise of authoritarianism and fascism. Those in power are reasserting their control over people’s bodies in general, and queer people intrinsically challenge that control.

Recognizing these connections has helped to further direct practical strategies and tactics.

LGBTQ+ organizers have long played key roles in various movements. However, they have sometimes faced queer and transphobia within these very movements, just as they’ve faced oppression in the world at large. If movements fail to address these reactionary views and behaviors, they will be ill-equipped to effectively counter the “divide and conquer” tactics the wealthy and powerful pursue.

In recent years, queer and trans peasants and members of the food sovereignty movement have pushed to challenge oppressive ideas and create spaces for gender and sexual diversity such as at La Via Campesina’s 8th Conference in 2023 and the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum last year.

LGBTQ+ movement organizers have also consciously reached out to build alliances with other movements. Besides already helping to lead movements in solidarity with Palestine, for food sovereignty, and for immigrant rights and make them more intersectional, these organizers have raised these movements’ demands within LGBTQ+ communities as well.

Since 2023, grassroots queer activists have regularly raised the slogan “No Pride in Genocide” and taken action to challenge mainstream LGBTQ+ Pride organizations’ support for Israel’s war and pinkwashing marketing machines.

Movements are showing us that linking our struggles is not only a question of survival. It is a critical step on the path towards systemic transformation.

Don’t Back Down, Double Down

Grassroots International continues to accompany this work, such as providing key support for Via Campesina’s Diversities Articulation. However, unfortunately, support for movement building is rare in the overall LGBTQ+ funding landscape.

Instead of stepping back and backing down, we call upon philanthropy to step up and double down. Not only should we reverse the decline in sheer dollar amounts, but we should also redirect more funds to social movements – from a perspective of solidarity and reciprocity.

Grassroots International recognizes that we ourselves have a long way to go. But we affirm our commitment to walk beside and accompany our partners in their organizing around LGBTQ+ liberation and deepen our shared learning. Until all of us are free.