On last year’s Pride Day we took to the streets of Madrid as an Alternative Block to show our rejection of the mainstream “parade” model that has been imposed on us year after year. In 2007 we think it is especially important to raise our voices against an event like Europride, which has been organised by an international corporate group and promotes reformist and market-oriented LTGB values and models. We want to revive the spirit of protest and public mobilisation. We want to remind everyone that we have demands and still suffer discrimination and intolerance because of our sexual option, without, of course, renouncing the exuberant, colourful and joyful character of pride demonstrations.

We’re calling out to all those in Madrid or elsewhere who wish to join us: we are preparing a series of events and activities for 30th June in Madrid: an open meal, debates and discussions, assemblies, direct action and a party. These activities will culminate in our protest participation in the Pride March as the Alternative Block. The programme of events will appear in www.bloquealternativo.org , where you can also find texts for discussion, news and information on free accommodation during Pride weekend for all of you coming from outside Madrid. You can also contact the Block by e-mail at  bloque@bloquealternativo.org

Why an Alternative Block?

The Alternative Block is an assembly of LTGBQ people and groups in Madrid backed by a diverse group of Madrid’s social movements, as well as LGTBQ groups in Zaragoza, Donosti (San Sebastian), Porto, Lisbon, and Barcelona among others. We are not only united against the increasing consumerist materialism of Madrid Pride marches, in which publicity, business people and corporations are increasingly central and demands for LTGBQ rights and freedoms are increasingly marginalised. We are not only against the void subservient ideology of great parts of the movement that in Madrid, as in other parts of the world, obeys governments, institutions and neoliberal political parties. We are not only against the patriarchal, masculine and bourgeois image of LTGB people, which marginalises transsexuals and lesbians and sexual diversity in all its forms invisible: poor LTGB people, migrants, working-class, students, HIV-positive, unemployed, etc.

It’s not only that. We want to raise our voices against violence, humiliation and discrimination of LTGBQ people, whether by fascists on the streets or in the police stations of our cities. We want transsexuals’ identity to be fully respected and their demands met: healthcare, work, social respect, and depathologisation. We want the repression of LTGB people during Franco’s regime to be recognised and that compensation measures be put in place. We want LTGBQ minors’ rights to be recognised in schools, families and at a social level. We want aged LTGB people’s rights to be respected, instead of being segregated and forgotten. We want to denounce the conservative wave sweeping Europe and other parts of the world. The intolerance of the Catholic Church, the Polish government’s repressive measures, and those of many institutions of presumably “democratic” countries are all signs of this. We want to express our solidarity with LTBTQ people in the so-called Third World and denounce the heterosexual authoritarianism they suffer under dictatorships often backed and fostered by Western countries. We call out to end those murders of people for their sexual option which happen everyday both in far corners and nearby cities backed by the complicit silence of the majority.

In essence, what we want is to take up basic historical LTGBQ demands once again. Marriage and limited assistentialist measures have hardly met them. And we want to do this through our presence at the Pride march, conveying our message without censorship or restrictions. We want to make pride, liberation and celebration our best tools.

Come and join us in our festive and activist struggle!