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Utrechtse Pride Demo
March and speeches
Program TBA
The first pride was not just a riot, it was a queer uprising against police brutality and state violence led by trans women of color, working class queers, sex workers, and young people. What is pride, then, but a collective celebration of queer & trans resistance and rebellion in all its forms. That is the pride we choose to honor and celebrate.
This year, we take to the streets in solidarity with our queer and trans kin living in limbo in the asylum system, locked up in refugee camps.

The European Union is investing billions of euros in the name of safety, keeping people away, letting them drown, suffocate in containers, while also investing in abusive regimes that imprison, enslave and torture people at the periphery of their colonial and imperial sites of despair. Europe is constructed every day on the dying bodies of people trying to cross its borders.

The rise of the far right, their increase in power and platform to spew hate and homonationalistic rhetoric, has been mainstreaming hateful agendas in the public debates. We will not stand for the use of queer liberation politics to uphold the idea that Europe’s safety is on the line, demonizing migrants and refugees, where they are scapegoated under an image of the dangerous “other”. Our liberation will not be co-opted by far right nationalism. We don’t buy into the narrative of progress, it is old and it’s been killing us for hundreds of years.

When it comes to LGBTQI+ rights, the Netherlands promotes itself as being progressive. Consecutive Dutch governments have been using for decades this ‘tolerance’ politik promoting pinkwashing images doing soft diplomacy and business on behalf of big corporations in many places around the world. They wrap their neocolonial structures and exploitation in rainbow flags, structures that have left lands uninhabitable and dignified life impossible all over the world, forcing people to flee their countries in search of a better life.

Due to the Dutch reputation of being a liberal state, safe for gay and queer people, many of them apply for asylum here. For the ones that are lucky enough to survive impossible conditions and make it here, once they arrive, they are faced with inhumane conditions in the refugee camps and brutal mistreatment from the IND asylum procedures, from COA and their straight, cis peers with whom they have to live in close quarters. For whom is this place really safe?

We call on our communities to come out and join in solidarity and the fight to abolish all the structures that exploit and dehumanize our migrant and refugee kin.

#abolishFRONTEX #drownIND #abolishtheborders #oops #whatispride?
Refugees and migrant lives are a queer issue!
Dignity is a queer issue!
Happiness is a queer issue!
Resisting the binary is a queer issue!
Anti-colonization is a queer issue!
Mental health is a queer issue!
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Protest measures
– We are only safe together.
– Keep distance from those outside your household or close social circle.
– Wear a face mask and satanize your hands.
– Be mindful of the space you take when you pass others.
– Stay patient with waiting for people to pass.
– We do not wish to rely on the police for our safety, but will be in dialogue with them via a spokesperson. Whatever the situation, DO NOT speak to the police when you feel unsafe or uncomfortable, PLEASE come directly to us.
– We need to be accountable amongst ourselves, so we can hold down space on our own: When you see someone doing something you don’t like, go talk to them. If you cannot resolve the problem, speak to one of our volunteers. If someone harasses or bothers you or your friends, speak to one of our volunteers

Accessibility info
The route is accessible for wheelchair users, we will have an access team present on the day itself and make the speeches available online. The walking time for the march is about 45 minutes in total, that is excluding the stops for speeches. If you have any specific access needs or questions, please send us a message!