We take back pride

On June 29, 2019, as Bloque Critico - Disidencias del Sur, we participated in the "official" Seville Pride 2019, that is, the capitalist pride, depoliticized, mercantilized, homonormalized. But we are not silent! We reclaim our pride, a political pride, a pride of dissidence, a pride as revolt.

In Pride Seville 2019 we showed that we exist, that not all agree with the depolitization and homonormalization of Pride (which in the media is already called "cavalcade" - depoliticization in extremis). We reclaim pride as protest and revolt.

We recall the origins of Pride in New York in 1969. We remember the stone of Marsha P. Johnson:

This June 2019 marks 50 years since Marsha P. Johnson threw a stone at power, materialized in the form of a police officer. That stone carried a message: our desires are not perverse, our affections are not sick, and our bodies and identities belong to us, even if it annoys those who it annoys. After this half-century, we can celebrate that those who exposed their bodies have managed to liberate some of the vital rights that "the dictatorship of the normal" held hostage. But even if everything around Pride is triumphal and unicorns are in fashion, there are still many stones to be thrown left and right.

And we threw some of these stones - metaphorically. A stone for Cuidadanos, which pacts with the extreme right and then wants to use Pride for its "pinkwashing". The organizers of the Pride of Madrid - an even more commercialized pride than the Pride of Seville - have at least taken some consequences and kicked Cuidadanos out of Madrid Pride, but nothing like this in Sevilla, even though in Andalusia PP and Ciudadanos are governing with the support of VOX. We shouted "Ciudadanos out of the pride", and it seems that some people moved to more direct actions.

It is not surprising that they complain (it was not painting but glitter), with an Orwellian discourse. Yes, we do not tolerate the attempt to commodify and depoliticize our revolt. We do not tolerate homonormalization, we do not tolerate our assimilation within a heteropartiarchal framework that only "tolerates" us if we become "presentable" and we parade Pride Day for the benefit of tourism in Seville.

We do not tolerate a party in our Pride that pacts with the homophobs of the extreme right with their hate speech. We do not tolerate the "freedom" of Ciudadanos, a freedom of the market, an individualized freedom that marginalizes a large part of our sexual and gender dissidencies. We do not want their "freedom", we want revolution.

This year we didn't get the GayLesPol police out of Pride, too. Have we forgotten their repressive role, their homophobia, transphobia and institutional queerophobia?

It is humiliating the presence of Gaylespol (the police LGTB+ association) in the institutional Pride, because you cannot be in our mass and giving truncheon, because the persecution of undocumented people, the siege of prostitutes or the protection of Nazi groups is oppression, and all oppressions are one. In the world we want, we don't want a gay-friendly police force, we want the repressive forces of the state and its internment centers to cease to exist.

When we arrived at the Alameda, we went to the Plaza de la Mata, and organized our self-managed party outside of their consumer show. We read our Manifesto, and celebrated our Pride.

Next year we'll be back. We won't let ourselves be silenced! Pride is protest, Pride is revolt!