PRIDE AT WORK MARCH / APRIL 2021
RAINBOW CROSSWALKS ARE MORE THAN SYMBOLS The (sometimes controversial) crosswalks provide an important message about inclusive values By Colin Druhan
When I was in high school in the ’90s, I didn’t have any social media platforms on which I could share my views with others, because social media did not yet exist. However, I did have a few spaces where I could let people know who I was and what I stood for. For instance, my backpack was covered in pins to show which bands I liked and to make it clear that I wanted to “smash fascism” (I still do, by the way). One day, I got a one-inch button with a Rainbow Flag on it from a record store. It took me weeks to muster the courage to finally put it on my bag. I was out to some people, but this type of queer visibility felt like a huge step forward for me…until I realized that not many people in my school knew what the Rainbow Flag represented. What I had thought of as an act of radical queerness fell completely flat because there was no familiarity with the symbol I was using. Now rainbow stuff is everywhere. It’s on T-shirts, ATMs and beer cans, especially around Pride. It’s becoming a permanent fixture in an increasing number of municipalities in the form of Rainbow Crosswalks. Like many of the most well-known symbols of our communities’ movements (Pride parades and the Rainbow Flag itself) that have been embraced by the dominant (i.e., cis, hetero) culture, the history of Rainbow Crosswalks is rooted in activism 8
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against state-sponsored oppression of queer people. For a while they were used to indicate a high concentration of queer-owned businesses. Now they are everywhere, often with the intention to show how inclusive and welcoming a community is of queer and trans people. Great progress, right? Then why are there just as many news stories about their defacement as there are about their institution? Chase Blodgett is a Yukon-based activist. He is the founder and president of All Genders Yukon Society, an organization that provides services to trans, two-spirit, nonbinary and questioning people and their primary supports. Blodgett has lived in Yukon for 10 years, but it took him two years to meet other queer folks in the territory because there weren’t always ways for people to connect: “Back then, we didn’t have any LGBTQ2S+ spaces. Now Queer Yukon Society exists, All Genders Yukon Society exists.” Blodgett sees symbols like Rainbow Crosswalks as an incredibly important part of a broader strategy to bring queer and trans people together. “Someone who was to move here tomorrow wouldn’t have as hard a time connecting with the community now. Putting in those symbols was a big part of that.”
