Radical Pride: what is this anti-racist and anti-imperialist movement that will march in Paris on Sunday?

A week before the LGBT+ Pride March, radical Pride will march through the streets of Paris this Sunday.

For the second consecutive year, this movement bringing together 19 collectives intends to distance itself from Inter-LGBT and its famous Gay Pride, which has become a Pride March.

“We wanted a Pride March independent of Inter-LGBT, by us and for us, far from superficial representations and the instrumentalization of our struggles,” the organizers wrote in a press release.

Because, according to them, the LGBTQIA + struggles (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex and asexual people) suffer from political appropriations.

“Overall, there has been a commercial takeover of Pride, authorized by Inter-LGBT.

The fact that brands parade is quite problematic, they take up more space than the people celebrated.

The Coca-Cola or Levi's floats make the participants invisible,” said a spokesperson for the radical Pride.

Contacted, the Inter-LGBT did not respond to our requests this Saturday.

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Unlike the Pride March, the Pride Radicale also contests the presence of certain LGBT associations, such as that of the FLAG!, which represents police officers and firefighters, or even that of Air France, "a company paid by the State for expel migrants”.

Undesirable LGBT police or Air France associations

Because the radical Pride claims the particularity of representing all minorities: LGBTQIA people of course, but also those with disabilities, the black population and migrants.

“We accompany LGBT asylum seekers who are assaulted by the police, so it is unlikely for us to have police representatives on our side.

Besides, the police are not at the New York Pride parade (they are banned there at least until 2025).

Some people are afraid of these people, and would not dare march in their presence.

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They also claim an anti-carceral struggle, because according to them, “the judicial system is entirely designed around a neocolonial punitive ideology”, or even the “depsychiatrization of queer identities”: “Medical and psychiatric discourses are not neutral, (… ) they have always ensured a political function of social control, based on the norm as a repressive instrument,” the organization writes on its Instagram account.

Last year, the Radical Pride brought together 30,000 participants, 19 member organizations and 56 collectives and associations that signed the appeal.

In the middle of Covid, the organizers did not expect so much.

This year, the “anti-racist and anti-imperialist” organization has chosen to place the fight for the rights of migrants at the heart of their demands, in a logic of “intersectionality of struggles”.

And feels “more legitimate” than ever.