100,000 people take to Brussels for Pride parade

It was a busy weekend in Brussels, with 100,000 people attending the Pride parade. More than 80 groups and associations marched or rode floats in the parade celebrating and defending the LGBT+ community.

The Pride theme this year was intersectionality, with the tagline All for One! “With solidarity and intersectionality as baselines, we want to emphasise that everyone is unique and deserves their place in society without discrimination, no matter the reason,” said Belgian Pride president Cyrille Prestianni. “Let us stand up for each other and for the people who still face discrimination and exclusion every day.”

Pride village’s party atmosphere was peppered with information stands, and the main stage at Kunstberg saw performances and DJs setting the scene until midnight. The event is now gearing up for its 25th anniversary edition next year.

Not everyone, however, is delighted by the growing Pride parade. “We are protesting against the political appropriation of Pride, against the lack of political support and against the insecurity in which LGBTQIA+ and sex workers still feel,” a spokesperson for Reclaim the Pride told Knack.

The group, which invited anyone who shared these feelings to join them, interrupted the parade when it blocked certain participants from marching. “Belgian Pride has become a political, commercial and touristic circus,” the spokesperson said. “Politicians arrive to take up this space that doesn’t belong to them and have monopolised a party that used to be part of the LGBTQIA+ struggle, the resistance, the revolution.”

This “pinkwashing” says the group, has got to stop. “We would like to see political parties in the parliaments and commissions listen to our voices the whole year through. There are still far too many children mutilated out of fear of non-defined gender, too many sex workers are forgotten by the legislation. We demand that political parties take strong measures for LGBTQIA and sex workers and stay away from Pride next year.”