Alexandria It has just over 92 thousand inhabitants. Nestled in the center of industrial triangle Turin-Milan-Genoa, of twentieth-century memory, the Municipality hosted the first Pride – the commemorative march of Stonewall Riotstoday a moment of vindication of the demands of the lgbtq+ community – In the 2019 under a centre-right council led by the Northern League. The one in Alessandria is one of many Pride of the “province”, the events organized not by the regional capital cities that led the way in Italy, such as Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples and Palermo, but from more peripheral realities – don’t ask! – where it is more complex than in large centers to organize and gather the strength to ensure that pride parades between the streets of city centers can take place regularly, collecting the queer community which here, even more urgently than the big cities, needs visibility and support.
Thinking of a Pride in Alessandria, just 10 years ago, would have been impossible, as in other places in Italy where organizations begin to gather year after year: Cosenza, Ferrara, Taranto, Enna, Forlì, Aosta, Belluno, to name a few. These are the cities ofPride wavethe network created in 2013 to act as a glue between all the experiences of national prides, with the desire to put the many realities of theassociationism, involving institutions and citizens. Today the Onda Pride network supports and gives visibility to Pride events throughout Italy, and it would be ungenerous not to recognize how this body has facilitated the flourishing, in many more or less small locations, of pride events over time, such as in Alessandria.
But how does a small Pride (every year less and less small) arise? ALPride – pun born between Alessandria and Pride, of which the city is quite proud? To understand this, we took help from Weaving Identitiesthe lgbtq+ association behind the organization of the first ALPride in the Piedmontese capital in 2019, and its vice-president Stefania Luce Cartasegnaat the time the highest ranking in the association.
How to organize a Pride, from scratch
“A lot of patience, that’s needed”, jokes Cartasegna. It all started well before 2019, from a request raised by local associations which had to deal with many resistances. “Working on a small territory means revealing alatent homophobia typical of provincialism Italian, which forces a now large queer community into the shadows”, he told us. When a Turin it was decided to do the first Pride in 2006with the centre-left mayor Sergio Chiamparino, the council was divided between the Catholic soul and the more progressive (majoritarian) one, but it was evident that there was attention towards these issues which favored the process; for example, one already existed anti-discrimination desk lgbtqia+ in the city. Alessandria underwent a slightly more complicated process, although 13 years had passed since Turin 2006. The first Pride of 2019, which did not see the participation of the local traders’ association, however brought together many local entities: from the CGIL to the Uil, passing through the social-welfare area, up to historic cooperatives such as The Seagull and the anti-violence center Medea. That year, great input also came from the University of Eastern Piedmont.
