Dear Reading Pride,
We are writing to you to follow up on the email you sent to Double Okay and DIY Pride organisers in 2024, in response to our concerns with your sponsorship by Doritos (PepsiCo). We felt your response was inappropriate, belittling, and most of all, evidenced the upholding of Zionist propaganda, which continues to fuel the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We shared your email publicly, to be transparent with our community following our open letter to you in July 2024. The wider community of LGBTQIA+ people across the UK were also appalled by your reply.
In response to your email and continued sponsorship by companies that fund Israel, we launched a DIY Pride Reading 2024 event and called for a boycott of Reading Pride and the ‘Love Unites’ festival. We supported performers to withdraw their labour from Reading Pride, with help from the LAD fund.
Our 2024 event was highly attended and our evening cabaret was sold out.The success of our 2024 event showed that the queer community in Reading appreciates having a grass roots pride event that is centred on our community. By standing with clear principles of anti-genocide and Trans-inclusivity, we have shown these are values that our community wants to support. We plan to show this again this year, in 2025.
We are reaching out to you again, to ask you to commit to following the examples of Brighton Pride, Northern Pride, Nottingham Pride, Norwich Pride, Doncaster Pride, Bristol Pride, and pledge to drop the sponsors that invest in Israel, and to honour BDS moving forward.
We understand that it takes a large amount of funds to organise Reading Pride, and the Doritos sponsorship has been reliable for many years. However, there is no justification for human suffering. Even if this means that Reading Pride will be a smaller event this year, from an ethical point of view it will be worth it. If you are planning changes to your sponsors for this reason or for other reasons, we ask that you communicate these changes to DIY Pride Reading and the larger Reading community in the spirit of community and transparency. While we would like to be included in any further conversations about the future of your sponsors, we have other concerns with Reading Pride that go beyond the sponsors list. To ensure you are showing up for our community and its needs in a sincere and meaningful way, we ask that you:
Please be aware that we will be posting this email correspondence as an open letter, to continue to be transparent with our community.
To read more about who we are, why we are, and what we are aiming to do, you can read our manifesto here: https://diypriderdg.co.uk/manifesto
Yours faithfully,
DIY Pride Reading
Double Okay
Reading Queer Social
Reading Sapphics Social
Dogmouth Theatre
Reading Queer Poetry Circle
Reading Radical Library
Reading Trans Movement