Seattle Pride event under fire for charging reparations fee; mayor candidate says they have right

Capitol Hill Pride—the premiere LGBTQ event organizer in Seattle—is criticizing another advocacy group for hosting a Pride event this weekend that charges a “$10 to $50 reparations fee” for white attendees.

Take B(l)ack Pride at Jimi Hendrix Park was meant to be a Black-centered Pride celebration.

Its organizers claim that the fee was a way of raising funds for LGBTQ people of color.

But Capitol Hill Pride said, in the end, the message is aggressively exclusive rather than inclusive and has sent a letter to the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

“We consider this reverse discrimination in its worse form and we feel we are being attacked for not supporting due to disparaging and hostile emails,” Capitol Hill Pride executives Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson wrote.

“We would like you to investigate the event as a possible ethics and elections violation as Take B(l)ack Pride is hosted by Nikki Etienne—a campaign manager for Nikkita Oliver.”

Oliver, an attorney, is running for the Seattle City Council.

Seattle City Council President M. Lorena Gonzalez—a candidate for mayor—is siding with Take B(l)ack Pride and has announced she will not attend Capitol Hill Pride.

“I simply cannot support an organization that is trying to stop Black people in the [LGBTQ] community from celebrating Pride in the manner that they choose,” Gonzalez said.