BARI – Fight against patriarchy, free and open abortion, self-determination of the Palestinian people and no to differentiated autonomy. These are just some of the demands of Bari Pride 2024, the parade for LGBTQIA+ rights that will parade in the center of the Apulian capital on Saturday 29 June. No special guests or exceptional godmother: it is a political choice made by the Bari Pride committee, which wants to put queer subjects at the center of the parade and not let “multinationals occupy the spaces of struggle, as happens in the Pride of larger cities like Milan or Rome”.
The leitmotif of this edition will be “Inhabiting Pride”: “It means occupying physical spaces in the world and fighting to ensure that those spaces are safe. However, for many of us, our homes are the first place where we suffer discrimination, and therefore the first and most violent physical, religious and economic oppression of our freedom to be and to love. Self-determination means first and foremost freeing ourselves from the economic yoke, from the patriarchal control of our lives in the materiality of our needs. Civil rights are also social rights, the two things coincide and cannot be separated”.
Last year, 20,000 people marched for Bari Pride, which on Saturday will start from Piazza Umberto («A space deeply linked to Bari’s LGBTQ history, inhabited by people in transit and racialized») and continue towards Via De Rossi, Corso Vittorio Emanuele , Lungomare Araldo di Corallanza, Piazza Amedeo Diaz and then from there it will return to the starting point. Departure scheduled at 3.00 pm.
“We are very satisfied with the results of the last elections – the Committee’s members declared during the presentation press conference, held yesterday morning -. Bari remains a progressive bastion. We hope to establish a dialogue with the new administration”.
The event is sponsored by the Municipality of Bari, the University of Bari Aldo Moro and the support of Peroni: “We accepted a donation from them and they will be present at the parade with a delegation of volunteer workers. We are very attentive to the issue of companies in queer spaces: before accepting their help, we made sure that the employees work in dignified conditions”.
Part of the proceeds from the initiative (including donations and sales of gadgets) will be donated to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for the relief and employment of Palestinian refugees in the Near East: «In the face of the genocide we are witnessing in the Strip of Gaza, we demand the recognition of the State of Palestine and reject the exploitation of LGBTQIA+ rights by the State of Israel as a means of propaganda to justify the legitimacy of the massacre of civilians. We ask the government and all the institutions not to be complicit in this.”
The political battle of Bari Pride also touches on the theme of differentiated autonomy, “which intends to definitively divide the North from the South of Italy, widen and further crystallize the gap of inequalities”. And then: laws against homolesbobitransphobia and ableism, sexual health, secularism and end of life, prisons, environment, migration and mental health. “Through collective action and allyship among marginalized, discriminated against, and oppressed bodies, we can challenge the power structures that perpetuate oppression and build the world we want.”
