Blogging with Pride

Three days before the march. This morning I came to Mozaika’s office and found one of the volunteers asleep on our cosy large windowsill. It’s a lot of work for a handful of people. By midday tomorrow, we are supposed to turn this office into the Friendship Days Information Centre. At the moment, we are drowning in posters, leaflets, whistles, coffee mugs and unfinished tasks on post-it notes. We are also sending press releases and reacting to stupidities that have hit the media in the past few days.

Some political parties actively condemn the march and ask people to ignore it. I guess it is better than asking people to go and throw shit at pride marchers… so should we be grateful ?… But, in reality, they are trying to make the Pride march look like some kind of event that will praise sexual perversion and should be ignored because it will be nasty. They bluntly refuse to accept this as a political demonstration – or simply don’t want people to see it.

We blog, press-release, write, speak and yell about equality and human rights, but unfortunately at the moment homophobes have louder voices and more listeners. It’s quite an unfair struggle to get the message across to wider society as long as the homophobes have a majority in the parliament, City Council and all the religious groups on their side and we have 5 people with passion and belief in what they do on our side. Still, we are not doing too badly.

Today we discovered that all our (Mozaika’s board members) private mobile phones numbers are published on one of the news websites … and people have been encouraged to call us and tell us what they think about Mozaika’s activities and about the “perversions” we “promote”. That information has been there for a week and nobody has called.

Luckily for us most of the homophobes are indeed too coward to call and actually speak to one of us. At best, they are brave enough to send anonymous text messages from the internet – not to be identified. Another unfair struggle of people with their names and faces publicly known against an anonymous crowd hiding behind their computers.

But hey - all that only makes us stronger. Because we believe in what we do. And we don’t hide.

Not that long ago I participated at the conference “Organizing prides in a hostile environment”, which took place back in 2006 and really related to our situation in Riga. One of the main concerns in hostile environments is, of course, security. One can’t underestimate how important it is. People who are coming to our event must know that we’ve done everything in our power to ensure their safety. We cooperate with the police as much as we can. Yet sometimes I get the feeling that they build two fences where they could have built one. We want the event to be safe. But we don’t want it to turn into a military operation.

Last year the entire area around the park was sealed off. There were two entrance points and there was a crowded mess at each entrance. I have to admit that if you were an LGBT person in Latvia last year - and maybe weren’t entirely sure if you wanted to participate just yet in a Pride but wanted to see how it all went and then decide if you wanted to participate, maybe next year – it was virtually impossible. You had to be really determined and confident not to be scared away. Being an LGBT person in Latvia is not easy and it still takes a lot of courage to come to the Pride. You might end up on the front page of a morning newspaper. You might end up in the evening news on the telly. It’s all still very scary for the majority of LGBT people. In that respect it is much easier for non-LGBT supporters to attend the event and that explains the relatively large number of straight people to join the march. You could say that they are marching for those who can’t.

What happens with security measures this year? They will still be tight but, I’d like to think, less frightening, considering last year’s success. Home made firecrackers that landed at the feet of the police chief last year were more of a joke than a serious threat and the two men who did it – a father and his underage son – were caught and prosecuted. The message is quite clear. Our police (when given the right orders) are very efficient and professional. So what can we do? We will try to encourage people to come. It might not be like a walk in the park but it’s safe. We will have to search everybody’s bags but that shall ensure safety even more. There will be media and that’s something we can’t protect against – but people have to understand there’s nothing wrong with being seen at the Pride.

To avoid any delays or hassle at the entrance we invite everyone to get a wristband at Mozaika’s info centre. Come to Mozaika’s office (address: Gertrudes iela 19/21 – third floor) any time on Thursday May 29th between 12:00 and 21:00 or Friday May 30^th between 10:00 and 18:00!