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Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back
February 5, 2023 @ 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Free screening, followed by a Q&A discussion with Selma, Dean and Ponyboy from the movie.
This documentary follows queer Palestine liberation activists fighting against the “Rainbow Generations” pro-Israel propaganda tour in Seattle in 2012.
Selma Al-Aswad is a Palestinian community organizer, ethnographer, and researcher based in Seattle. She’s been actively engaged in Palestinian liberation organizing for the past 20 years and is currently a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective. Ponyboy is an Armenian/South Asian trans artist, now based in Portland, OR, who has been working in queer music and cultural activism for the past two decades. Dean Spade is a Seattle-based writer, video maker and organizer whose work focuses on trans liberation, and ending cops, prisons, borders and the US military.
Subtitles + ASL interpretation, theater is wheelchair accessible, masks required. Please take a COVID test before coming.
This screening is taking place on unceded lands of Chinook and related tribes, and they request support for recognition at ChinookJustice.org
More about Pinkwashing Exposed:
“Pinkwashing” is a term activists have coined for when countries engaged in terrible human rights violations promote themselves as “gay friendly” to improve their public image. Israel is the country most famous for this strategy, having initiated it as part of a rebranding campaign has been engaged in for the last decade.
In 2012, activists in the Pacific Northwestern region of the US responded to an Israeli Consulate-funded pinkwashing tour featuring Israeli gay and lesbian activists that was coming to the region. Local queer Palestine solidarity activists exposed the “Rainbow Generations” tour as pro-Israel propaganda and got some of the events, including the tour’s centerpiece event hosted by the City of Seattle’s LGBT Commission, cancelled.
A significant backlash ensued involving the Seattle City Council and Seattle’s leading LGBT and HIV organizations. Through the inspiring story of these activists’ victory, Pinkwashing Exposed explores how pinkwashing works and what local activists are doing to fight back. Pinkwashing Exposed was made in Seattle, on Duwamish Land. The Duwamish are in a long fight for recognition by the US government. We can help by donating.
