Dear Amanda Hilton, Kriss Hubbard, Nicola Croft-Girvan, and Matthew Exley

We are writing to you as a group of queer folks from across the Liverpool City Region to express our concern about LCR Pride Foundation's partnership with Barclays, and acceptance of donations from other companies complicit in the genocide of Palestine.

Barclays owns shares worth over £2 billion – and provides a further £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting – to nine companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel, as revealed in a recent joint report between War on Want, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Campaign Against the Arms Trade (waronwant.org/news-analysis/barclays-bankrolling-g...)

As you are reading this the weapons and technology that Barclays are investing in are being used to murder people in Palestine. The Lancet has now estimated the death toll since October to be at least 186,000 (thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-673...) Aside from Barclays, LCR Pride Foundation has also accepted donations from Ridge & Partners LLP, a consultancy firm who work with the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces, and Rathbones Investment Managers who pump money into BAE Systems, an arms company supplying F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel. There are growing calls for an arms embargo against Israel and we believe that everyone should be doing what they can to support this. As a major cultural event, LCR Pride Foundation has the power to add significant pressure to this call.

We also believe it is important for all Pride events to honour their activist roots and not play a part in corporate & government pinkwashing (using the apparent acceptance of queer people to cover up other forms of oppression). We all saw the photo of the IOF soldier holding a pride flag in front of flattened homes in Gaza with the messages "in the name of love" and "the first pride flag raised in Gaza". We reject this erasure of queer Palestinian people and we reject the false narrative of Israel as a safe haven for queer people. Not only is it unsafe for queer Palestinians, but it doesn't even allow for same sex marriages to be performed. We see our struggles against oppression as interconnected and we wholeheartedly condemn the weaponisation of our queer identity as justification for genocide. We reject all forms of pinkwashing and we platform the voices of queer Palestinians. To quote one submission from an individual in Palestine on Queering the Map, a platform archiving queer experience across the world, "If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything" (https://www.queeringthemap.com/)

As part of Liverpool's queer community, we do not want our Pride celebrations to be financially tied with companies complicit in genocide or in any form of oppression. In the context of the wider corporatisation of Pride celebrations across the country, LCR Pride has always kept a strong community focus, remaining free to attend and always being led by the Michael Causer Foundation. We urge you to double down on this community focus and extend it to the global queer community, to show solidarity with queer Palestinians who are losing their lives in these interconnected struggles. We want our Pride celebrations to prioritise queer people over financial gain. We want to celebrate the incredible queer community we have here in Liverpool without causing harm to out queer siblings in Palestine.

With this in mind we are calling on you to meet the following demands:

Cut all ties with Barclays, end the current three year partnership and refuse any future partnerships, sponsorships, or donations

Refuse current and future donations from any company profiting from genocide such as Ridge & Partners LLP, a consultancy firm who work with the Ministry of Defence, and Rathbones Investment Managers who pump money into BAE Systems

Refuse current and future donations, sponsorships, or partnerships with any company listed on the official BDS list

Instate an ethical fundraising policy that is easily available to the public to ensure full transparency

Platform queer Palestinian voices

It is worth noting that these demands are not unprecedented. Just last month, Download, Latitude, and Isle of Wight festivals ended their sponsorships with Barclays (theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jun/14/barclays...) We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these demands with you further, we want to work together to ensure the LCR Pride Foundation is representative and welcoming for all queer people. We ask that you respond to these demands by 20th July.

Nobody's free until everybody's free.