J. Andrew Baker
Switzerland
He/They
J. Andrew Baker (he/they) is a Witch, High Priest, educator, fundraiser, and activist working at the intersections of spirituality, Indigenous language revitalisation, rights actualisation, and global advocacy. He has helped raise more than $200 million USD in support of 2SLGBTQIA+ and Indigenous communities worldwide, co-founded three 2SLGBTQIA+ organisations in Canada, and supported the launch of more than 10 Indigenous-led programs.
As Head of Partnerships for Global Pride 2020, he helped bring together over 500 organisations across 80 countries for the largest online Pride event to date, reaching more than 57 million people worldwide.
Steps to Liberation
To Be Seen, We Must Be Sustained
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly stopped Pride as the world knew it. Events disappeared from calendars, marches were canceled, stages went dark, and community spaces closed. For Andrew Baker, this was about far more than losing a parade or an annual celebration.
Pride had provided community, income, safety, culture, and a sense of belonging. Artists lost work. Organizations lost revenue. Queer and trans people were separated from chosen families and from the public visibility that reminded them they were not alone.
The impact was not experienced equally. Some people were isolated in homes where they were unsafe or unsupported. Elders became more isolated, young people lost access to community, and people already facing poverty, racism, disability, and other challenges were placed under even greater pressure.
Out of that crisis came Global Pride 2020. More than 100 volunteers contributed over 30,000 hours to create something that had never existed before: a 27-hour digital Pride featuring voices and content from all seven continents and participation from more than 110 countries. An estimated 57 million people watched. Global Pride also raised funds that provided more than 75 small grants to Pride organizations at risk in more than 30 countries.
Yet Andrew is clear that digital Pride could never simply replace people gathering together. What Global Pride revealed was something deeper: Pride is not ultimately about where we gather, but why we gather. For some people, Pride can be a parade through a capital city. For others, it may be a private gathering, a coded message, or a few minutes beneath a rainbow flag. In places where visibility can result in violence or arrest, the same public expression that feels liberating to one community may put another community at risk.
Andrew therefore asks us to think carefully about what we mean when we talk about liberation. A model of Pride that works in one place may not be appropriate everywhere. A truly global movement must listen to people whose circumstances are different—including those for whom visibility itself can carry danger.
His argument then moves from visibility to sustainability.
Pride has often depended heavily on volunteers who give extraordinary amounts of time and energy. But Andrew argues that volunteerism cannot be the only resource holding a movement together. When people are continually expected to give everything they have, exhaustion eventually becomes inevitable. The people organizing Pride are not separate from the communities they serve. They are living with the same realities: illness, disability, racism, migration, poverty, family rejection, homelessness, discrimination, and the lasting effects of violence and the pandemic.
That means Pride needs more than money for a parade, a stage, a banner, or a campaign in June. It needs sustained investment in people and infrastructure: artists and speakers, accessibility, health care, legal support, translation, community events, conflict resolution, leadership development, and rest.
Andrew makes an especially important distinction between visibility and justice. A company or institution may measure its Pride investment by attendance, media impressions, logo exposure, or employee participation. But those measurements do not tell us whether a community is actually stronger.
He proposes different questions: Who became safer? Which artist was paid fairly? Which organizer was able to rest? Which young person saw a future? Which older person felt remembered? Which community felt that Pride was truly for them?
For Andrew, these are the measures that matter.
His vision of Pride ultimately reaches beyond a parade or a season. Pride is a promise that we will not disappear, that we will not abandon those most at risk, that we will remember those who came before, that we will make room for those still coming, and that we will support the people carrying the movement forward.
And his final insight brings the entire contribution together:
Freedom is not only about being visible; it is about being able to keep going toward liberation.
That is an exceptionally strong idea for Steps to Liberation. A movement cannot take the next step if the people carrying it are exhausted, underfunded, or left behind. This contribution makes the case that sustaining the people and communities of Pride is itself part of the journey toward freedom.
