Belgrade Pride begins

I’ve written earlier about the announcement of the decision to hold Gay Pride in Beograd this year – so, here’s a bit of an update. Now, I must warn you that this story has a bitter beginning, but hopefully a happy ending sometime later this year.
In the previous month or so, several LGBT groups and a few individuals started meeting and working on organizing Pride. I also joined after several initial meetings, uncomfortable with a fact that I had to sign a contract (!) in order to join. Now, how did this happen?

Well, one of the groups tried to control the process. Then, their imposed “leadership” fell apart once the rest of us found out that this group was working behind our backs from the beginning - totally unnecessary and against everything we agreed on. The whole thing culminated three weeks ago when this group sent public announcement to all media, saying that Pride will happen on 23rd August, announcing it in a way that they chose the date in agreement with other LGBT organizations, which, wasn’t true.
Well, you can try to imagine the situation where you are working with someone and then you find out from the media what they are actually doing.

Finally, a denial was sent to media and this group was expelled from the process. The whole situation, of course, caused big damage.. Some homophobic media couldn’t wait to write about “big fight within the gay community”, the gay community is angry at all of us, homophobes happy, everyone else who initially supported Pride is now confused...
Typical isn’t it?

Well, as part of the Belgrade Pride 2009 organizing committee I can say that we are facing a great challenge, even bigger than a few months ago – but “the show must go on”.
Safety is a number one priority in organizing this event, and its gonna happen only if police agrees to give its guaranty.
A safety study is soon going to be made in cooperation with security experts and police and only after we are assured that we will receive protection we can move on to other elements of the event, such as its route, program and so on.

In that way, hopefully people will regain their trust, and come to support this political protest for freedom from violence.
More news and updates in my next blog ;)