A few weeks after third edition of Ragusa Pridewhich this year will take place on the days of 28 and 29 June in Marina di Ragusathe organizing committee makes the event platform public. “This is the flower”, the slogan chosen for the 2024 editionimmediately summarizes the anti-fascist spirit that informs the entire political manifesto and punctuates the various points of the document.
“An intense document – it is explained in a note – in which the reference to the historical and militant roots of Pride, which date back to the “Stonewall riots” of 28 June 1969 in Manhattan, is intertwined with the analysis of the critical issues of the present time, in which the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ people suffer a continuous and rapid erosion by the government of Giorgia Meloni and its offshoots. Not by chance, as the document recallsItaly occupies 36th place in the Rainbow Map 2024 for the equality and protection of LGBTQIA+ people out of 49 countries surveyedlower even than Orbán’s illiberal and authoritarian Hungary.”
“For this third edition of Ragusa Pride we wanted to draw up a political document that positioned us in unequivocal terms – explain the spokespersons of the committee -. In a difficult and dangerous historical period like the one we are experiencing, when our rights lose ground every day and as LGBTQIA+ people we suffer continuous attacks, it seemed essential to us to offer a clear interpretation of the intentions and demands of the demonstration that will cross the streets and the squares of Marina di Ragusa on June 29th. The Pride parade – continues the committee -, like the events that precede it, is the highest political moment of our community, the one that gives visibility to our existences, to the diversity we embody with our bodies and to our demands. ‘This is the flower’, the slogan we have chosen, not only makes it explicit the anti-fascism that permeates our strugglesbut also openly declares that, as a community, we consider ourselves ‘the flower of resistance’, that red poppy that stands out in this year’s logo and which expresses with a simple image our irreducible fight against every form of oppression and denial of rights ”.
The document, written by several hands, was born from collective work carried out in recent months by the people involved in organizing the event. “We have created various opportunities for discussion within the Ragusa Pride Network to identify and define the key words of this Pride – specifies Andrea Ragusa, president of Arcigay Ragusa, the organization’s leading association. – Le password merged into the document, anti-fascism, self-determination, pride, intersectionality, families and naturally, rights, summarize our political vision and our demands. But we did not want to stop at abstract concepts, this year we have included in the platform some specific requests addressed to representatives of local institutions and schools, because we think that purely formal memberships or vague and occasional declarations of closeness are not enough, we ask that those who administer us implement concrete actions to defend our rights and support our community”.
These are the requests expressed in the final part of the document:
“We ask first of all the mayors of the Municipalities who sponsored Pride to establish the municipal register for the recognition of the name and gender of electionas well as to be courageous and in solidarity with our struggles, disapplying the circular from the Ministry of the Interior which prohibits transcription of birth certificates də childrenə of same-parent couples born abroad.
We also ask school leaders and managers and all public administrations to adopt regulations in their areas for the recognition of Career Aliases.
These are clear and unambiguous signals of a political will to recognize our existence and our civil rights. The degree of democracy and livability of a city is measured by the acceptance of these requests.”
