Many rainbow flags will be waving in Munich in the next two weeks. The city awaits most extensive “Pride Weeks”that ever existed. They start this Saturday and end with the street festival on the weekend of 24/25. June. The highlight will be the Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade on Saturday, June 24th. Last year around 400,000 people came to the street festival, this time there could be even more. More than 170 groups have registered for the political parade, they want to take part by car or on foot.
According to the organizers, it is the largest such demonstration for social and gender diversity in southern Germany. With Christopher Street Day, the queer community worldwide commemorates the uprising of homosexuals against police violence on June 28, 1969 on Christopher Street in New York.
Shortly before the Bavarian state elections, the CSD parade is linked to a political goal: the organizers in Munich and 19 other Bavarian cities call for a “queer action plan” for the Free State. This aims to promote equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, intersexuals and queer people and to combat discrimination and violence against them. They criticize that Bavaria is the only federal state that does not yet have such an action plan. However, Prime Minister Markus Söder recently surprisingly announced such an action plan.
“It’s about visibility,” says Kai Kundrath, managing director of the gay and queer center Sub, on Wednesday. Munich is a pioneer in Bavaria: Many queer people live in seclusion in the countryside, and resentment is even greater than in the city. The CSU-led state government must take the special needs and protection of the community seriously.
As the “patronwoman” of the CSD, Mayor Katrin habenschaden (Greens) is also campaigning for these concerns. A lot has improved in Munich, but queer people also experience rejection and violence here. “I stand steadfastly on the side of all queer people.” She is also calling on the state government to implement an action plan. She’s tired, she says, that Bavaria is “still the reactionary tail light” in the Federal Republic.
“Awareness” teams are out and about with balloons
Julia Bomsdorf from “LesCommunity” explains which individual demands and goals an action plan must contain: Counseling, for example, must be expanded, as must education and information about different sexual identities, starting with the curricula in schools. In order to improve security for queer people, the police must be made aware of anti-queer hate crimes.
According to the organizers, there will be some innovations in the Pride Weeks and at the street festival for the CSD. For the first time, awareness teams will be out and about during and after the parade. They are intended to help people who want support in a potentially unsafe situation or who see their limits violated. In the crowd, the teams of two should be recognizable by balloons.
The street festival on the weekend of 24./25. June extends over large parts of the city center. The party area is moving from Rindermarkt to the square in front of the Feldherrnhalle. There is much more space there, and if it gets too crowded, they say you can go to Ludwigstrasse. A “music island” is being set up on Sendlinger Strasse in front of the former SZ building. The main acts on the big stages are Mélovin, James Indigo and Tom Neuwirth alias Conchita Wurst.
As part of the Pride Weeks, in addition to sports, music and art events as well as workshops and church services, the recently hotly debated reading for children by drag queens will take place in the Bogenhauser branch of the city library.
The debate arose after the post of a CSU city councilor. Afterwards, the CSU faction complained that they were supposedly not allowed to take part in the CSD parade because of their criticism. Alexander Kluge, managing director of the CSD, contradicts this again: the CSU was not uninvited, it had registered for the first time. However, their participation in the parade was rejected even before the debate about the reading, because the party’s basic program does not match the queer-friendly claim of the CSD organizers. The party cannot, on the one hand, polemicize about the Drag Queen reading and then take part in a demonstration for gender diversity.
The LSU association, lesbians and gays in the Union, is still welcome, but has not registered. At the street festival on the CSD weekend, the CSU will be represented with an information stand. This is also welcomed, says Kluge, because there one can discuss the politics of the CSU with one another.