Categories
Uncategorized

This is a love letter!

Our precious & beloved communities of radical, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist queers; and our dear allies. We did it! IQPB is officially a Berlin tradition.

Thank you for being there, at IQPB, and in this world. IQPB is a day to celebrate our defiant existence and rebellious resistance, to celebrate the work we do all year round. A day for those working hard to link struggles, to amplify the voices of Global Majority communities, to challenge one another, to learn and unlearn from each other. A day to celebrate those who are building and living a world centered on love. On our love for freedom, our love for justice, our love for ourselves, and our love for each other. It is a day to celebrate all of you, all of us!

This year’s IQPB was organised by a web of individuals and groups: Berlin Against Pinkwashing, FACQ Berlin, Group Seiba, QUARC Berlin, Bloque Latinoamericano, Berlin Migrant Strikers, Jewish Bund, Kali Feminists, and Migrantifa Berlin. IQPB 2022 featured 16 official blocks: Disability Pride Block, Black Queer Block, Sex Workers Block, Asian Queer Pride Block, Anti-Caste Block, Sahrawi Block for Liberation, Lubunya Block, Ararat Block, Kurdish Block, Palestinian FLINTA* Block, Jewish Bund Block, Block for Refugee & Migrant Justice, Slava Block, Bloque Latinoamericano, Anarchist CSD Block, Lecsó Central European and Rroma Block. On the streets we saw how so many of you formed organic and self-organized blocks and shook the streets with chanting, dancing, music, powerful (and hilarious) banners, performances, hugs and collective power. After months of very hard work to make IQPB happen, and despite our tired hearts and bodies, seeing you on the streets, loud and proud, rebelliously angry and defiantly happy; has filled our hearts with happiness, our souls with empowerment, and our eyes with tears of joy. Thank you!

Your love and support, and your presence – on the streets and across borders – have helped us through a barrage of hate messages, racist comments, wishes of death against us, calls for our deportation, homonationalist racism, white German supremacy, fabricated accusations, and intimidation efforts. On the streets we saw how, once again, the (uninvited and unwelcomed) police, targeted and harassed the Kurdish Block. We saw how they intimidated people by walking on both sides of the accessibility van which was meant as a place of rest for those who need it.  We saw how the usual gangs of holier-than-thou Germans roamed around the Palestinian block with their aggressive stares, and how photographers hired to slander us pointed their invasive cameras against us. Little did they know their petty, yet dangerous, attempts to intimidate us will only strengthen our determination & solidarity. Together, we are stronger and more powerful (and more fabulous).

Year after year, together with you, and other BIPoC-centric & BIPoC-lead networks and groups in Berlin, we are reclaiming the space that is ours in this city. We are not, and we will not be diversity guests at White German events, be it cis-het or gay/lesbian, be it leftist or neoliberal! We will not be silenced nor be tamed tokens while listening to others dissect our identities, our bodies, our lives and our deaths. We quote our dear siblings from the Sex Workers Block “Nothing about us, without us!” (a slogan also commonly used in disability activism). We are the heartbeats of the streets of Berlin. We are the narrative and we are the storytellers. We are the colors, the voices, the raised fists, the defiant faces, one body with a thousand limbs and a thousand capacities and disabilities, proudly and lovingly joined in one collective dance of defiance and celebration. A march for liberation, for all of us, each one of us, and for those who were taken away from us, and those who couldn’t be with us.

Though we can’t respond to every comment, tag, message, and email. We are reading them and sharing them with the IQPB team. We are extremely grateful for your love and support, and for being here, for us and with us.

To our team, to the various working groups, to IQPB Awareness and Ordner:innen teams the day of the march, to those who held the ropes, our drivers, our lawyer, Soundsysters, Lauti MCs, speakers, our sign-language interpreter, the artists, those of you who brought us snacks and water, those who made music, drew banners, respectfully took photos and videos, and filled the streets. Those who cheered us, and those who gave us constructive criticism. We love you! You make IQPB what it is.

With much love, in solidarity and constant rebellion. No Pasarán!

IQPB Orga team.

If you want to help make IQPB 2023 happen, join our email list by writing to iqpb@riseup.net

Categories
Uncategorized

Accessibility

We are trying to make this protest as accessible as possible. The Hermannplatz U-Bahn and Kottbusser Tor U-Bahn stations both have elevators. The U-Bahn station at Moritzplatz does not have an elelvator. Find up-to-date information about available services at the following BVG station links: Hermanplatz, Kottbusser Tor, Moritzplatz.

There is a medic team at the demo.

We also have a support vehicle at the back of the demo that can seat 7 people for anyone who needs a rest or is not able to walk for the whole march.

We have a DGS interpreter who will interpret speeches.

Ordner:innen and the Orga Team are carrying masks. While we do not enforce mask wearing, we encourage everyone to wear them to protect everyone in our community.

Ordner:innen are also carrying ear plugs for you to use.

More info on Covid-19 guidelines, and access to water and toilets along the demo route will be announced soon on our social media.

If you have any specific access needs or questions about accessibility, please email us at iqpb@riseup.net and we will do our best to accomodate you.

Categories
Uncategorized

Corona Guidelines

Covid-19 is a social justice issue that overwhelmingly touches queer people, especially from communities of color, migrant communities, working-class communities, communities fighting against colonialism and war, the elderly and people with pre-existing health conditions and other vulnerabilities.

Our pride march is attended by many that are suffering from these vulnerabilities. So we will be walking in solidarity and care towards each other. By joining our pride march you agree to get tested for covid-19 on the same day and if you are feeling ill or have any covid, mpx or other symptoms we ask you to please not join the demo.

While masks will not be enforced, they are encouraged. Ordner*innen and the organizing team will also carry some extra masks: please ask them for these if you need them. We ask you to wear one to protect disabled queers and the most vulnerable in our community.

Solidarity and mutual care is our biggest strength. Let’s keep each other safe!

Categories
Uncategorized

Opening speech 2022

Official opening speech for IQPB 2022

Hello from the orga team of the Internationalist Queer Pride 2022! The second IQPB, a revolutionary, queer-led protest that reclaims our voices and reaffirms our presence in Berlin!  We are queer and trans groups and individuals, connected by the same goal: a transformed world where all of us live free from oppression and discrimination; where our sexualities are freely expressed and explored; where our identities are self-determined; where our bodies — and all bodies — are free to be, to choose, to move; where we care for each other; where there are no borders, no weapons, no cops; A world organized around well-being. 

We come together with our bodies, our voices, and our struggles to connect, to be in solidarity, and to build collective empowerment. Through our queerness, we imagine and define alternative ways of being, of living, of organizing. In the face of warfare and fascism, we stand firm in our determination to survive and thrive, united in revolutionary love and solidarity.

Our queerness opposes the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the very few, who profit from centuries of exploitation, genocide, war, and colonialism. We support the struggles of those subjected to colonial order. We demand justice and reparations for the damages that Europe and the EU have inflicted on the global majority. 

We are in solidarity with liberation, freedom, and justice struggles from around the world.
In Abya Yala
In Turtle Island
In Western Sahara
In Palestine
In Kurdistan
In Darfur
In Aotearoa
In Tamil Eelam
In Kashmir
In West Papua
With the Aboriginal peoples of Australia
With the Amazigh
With the Mapuche
With the Uyghur
With all who resist colonial violence!

We condemn the instrumentalization of queer rights and identities to pinkwash nationalist and colonial projects. Germany and the EU use our rights for their political and economic agendas when convenient, yet they sponsor and give political cover to homophobic, transphobic and anti-feminist regimes. Our rights and lives are not pawns for German foreign policy. We demand Germany and the EU stop sponsoring regimes that violate our existence.

Our queer liberation is rooted in anti-militarism, anti-policing, and anti-war activism. We don’t just want marriage, we want the abolition of white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy and all its institutions!

We denounce the German and EU/US weapon industries. We denounce their support for repressive governments and dictatorships, fueling civil conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. 

We condemn the horrendous war on Ukraine, and we stand in full solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
Yet we note the hypocrisy and double standards of Western countries. Not only in relation to other wars and injustices, but also in the racist discrimination against BIPoC and third-country refugees from Ukraine. The ongoing violence against BIPoC communities, from the Afghan refugees at the Belarussian-Polish border to those left to drown in the Mediterranean or pushed to their death by the Libyan mercenaries and Frontex.

Borders kill! The Ausländerbehörde and Germany’s anti-migrant policies kill!
All people are legal. All people have the right to live with dignity.
We must abolish the border regime! Everyone must have access to residency and freedom of movement.

As queers we know the dangerous impacts of policing. The police do not keep us safe. We have been the target of police violence. We have been the target of social, medical, and economic policing of our bodies, our identities, our expressions. We oppose the policing of our voices.
We demand a queer world without policing of any form!

Trans-exclusionary and far-right groups are fanning the flames of hate. Trans women and trans femmes are targets for exclusion, violence and femicide, even in spaces that claim to be “safer.” We mourn too many of our trans sisters—like Ella here in Berlin—killed by a transmisogynist, classist, and racist system. We demand to be treated with respect and an unconditional right to self-determination, regardless of residence status, gender performance, or social background.

We demand protection for intersex people from non-consensual surgeries intended to violently force our bodies into a binary norm. Intersex bodies are not shameful.

We demand self-determination and a free, unprejudiced health system for all bodies and gender identities.

We stand in solidarity with all sex workers, many of whom are trans, queer, migrant, disabled, sole caregivers, and/or BIPoC, in their fight against stigma and against laws that make their work unsafe and illegal. We demand the decriminalization of sex work.

There are no bad whores, only bad laws!

Like our bodies, our lives, and our desires, our environment has been exploited and oppressed. Climate justice can start only with the acknowledgment that the climate emergency we are in is the consequence of 500+ years of colonialism, capitalism, and extractive politics in global majority countries. We must move beyond 1.5-degree policies and greenwashing. We demand socio-ecological transformation.

We demand affordable housing and the re-communalization set in motion by DW enteignen. Housing is a basic human right!

We demand an education that respects all genders and affirms the exploration and development of our identities and sexualities.

We demand a world where our bodies are not valued by their ability to contribute to capital. A world where our abilities and disabilities, visible and invisible, are not a reason to be excluded from society. Where our physical, emotional or mental health, stop being reasons for marginalization and stigma. Wear your masks!

We demand decriminalization, an end to stigmatization, and guaranteed free access to abortion. 
We demand agency and self-determination over our bodies and identities.
We demand guaranteed free access for everyone to a healthcare that affirms our bodies.

We demand a world without borders.
We demand a world without policing.
We fight for an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist world.

We demand a world centered on love. On our love for freedom, our love for justice, our love for ourselves, and our love for each other. A world where we thrive together and not at the expense of others, be it humans, the environment or other creatures.

None of us are free until all of us are free!

Have a rebellious, safe and fun Internationalist Queer Pride March for Liberation 2022. Remember! Always anti-colonial, always anti-racist, always anti-capitalist, proud queers!

Whose streets?
Our streets!

Whose streets?
Our streets! 

Categories
Uncategorized

Route, Toilets and water

The title in the upper left corner reads "IQPB 2022 ROUTE - TOILETS" and shows the routhe as well as nearby toilets marked. The list of locations is found in text below the image. The route depicted on a satellite map image starts from Herrmannplatz, walking northwards onto Kottbusser Damm until Kottbusser Tor. From there, the march turns right onto Skalitzer Straße until Görlitzer Bahnhof. Then it turns left onto Oranienstraße and ends in Oranienplatz.

List of toilets along / close to the route

  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (entrance fee) at Hermannplatz (corner Sonnenallee / Kottbusser Damm)
  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (entrance fee) at Planufer 5
  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (entrance fee) at Lausitzer Platz 8A
  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (free) at Mariannenplatz 2
  • Toilet at Waldemarstr. 57
  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (entrance fee) at corner Mariannenplatz / Waldemarstraße
  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (entrance fee) at Oranienplatz (across the street from Oranienplatz 1)
  • Wheelchair-accessible toilet (free) at Prinzessinnenstraße 16
Map of the route (Hermannplatz > Kottbusser Tor > Görlitzer Bahnhof > Oranienplatz) with nearby places to refill water marked. The list of locations is found in text below the image.

List of places to refill drinking water along / close to the route

  • Water fountain at corner Hobrechtstraße / Weserstraße
  • Biosphäre Neukölln, Weserstraße 212
  • Refugio Café, Lenaustraße 4
  • Café Universo, Lenaustraße 5
  • Water fountain at Hohenstaufenplatz by Kottbusser Damm
  • She said, Kottbusser Damm 79
  • Biocompany, Kottbusser Damm 91/92
  • denn’s Biomarkt, Kottbussser Damm 3
  • Radspannerei, Kottbusser Str. 8
  • Water fountain at Kottbusser Tor (by Kottbusser Straße 25 / Reichenberger Straße 18)
  • Multilayerladen, Adalbertstraße 4
  • Biocompany, Skalitzer Straße 127
  • Klas Bäckerei, Naunynstraße 2
  • Das Café Frühstückshaus, Oranienstraße 177
  • kinderlabor curioso, Waldemarstraße 57
  • Water fountain on Mariannenplatz, close to corner Mariannenplatz / Muskauer Straße
Categories
Uncategorized

Looking for Volunteers

Want to help us reclaim pride and bring together Berlin’s radical queer, anti-colonial and anti-racist communities? We want you to join us! We are looking for people to join our Awareness teams for our Internationalist Queer Pride for Liberation!

We especially encourage BIPoC and 2SLGBTQIA+ people. Allies, including white and cishet people who share our liberation politics, are also very welcome to support us. No prior experience necessary!

Interested?

Get in touch via instagram or twitter!

You can also write an email to iqpb@riseup.net.

Categories
Uncategorized

Flags and uniforms

We invite flags and symbols that represent antiracist, indigenous, anticolonial, queer*trans*feminist, anti-ableist and/or workers’ struggles and resistance. Military and police uniforms are not welcome.

Categories
Uncategorized

Photos at the demo

Please respect the privacy of everyone attending the demo. Take photos from the back, and don’t include people’s faces or any identifiable features.

If you want to photograph someone’s face, or another identifying feature,
ask first! Only take the photo if you have their explicit consent.

Members of the official pride media team will be wearing vests showing they are part of the demo team. Let them know if you don’t want to be filmed or photographed.

Categories
Uncategorized

Awareness statement

It is a priority for us to ensure that our pride march is a safer space for our community. In this spirit, we do not welcome people with exclusionary, racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, national or right-wing views, placards, or statements.

Transphobia and any kind of anti-trans hostility has no place in queer liberation or in feminism. Trans Exclusionary Radical “Feminists” are not welcome at our march.

There is no liberation for any of us without Palestinian liberation. The so-called anti-Deutsche are not welcome at this event.

We stand for decriminalization of sex work and oppose politics that stigmatize and vulnerate sex workers’ safety and rights. Groups who are against sex workers’ rights are not welcome at the march.

The internationalist queer pride will have a dedicated and clearly visible “awareness team” to ensure as much as possible the safety of our attendeeds. We are not able to guarantee the safety of patiticpants, but will do all in our power to ensure that our community feels safe, protected, and empowered on this day of pride and protest.

Categories
Uncategorized

Political Paper

Our Internationalist Queer Pride for Liberation is not a rave! It is a fight! 

We are a network of queer and trans groups and individuals that are connected by the same goal: a transformed world where all of us live free from any level of systemic oppression and discrimination; where our sexualities are freely expressed and explored; where our identities are self-determined; where our bodies —and all bodies — are free to be, to choose, to move; where we care for each other; where there are no borders, no weapons, no cops; where everything is organized towards our well-being, and the well-being of animals and the environment. We are all contributing to building this revolutionary world through our everyday struggles.

We come together in this spirit to organize the Internationalist Queer Pride for Liberation, a revolutionary queer/trans-led protest where we bring our bodies, our voices, and our struggles to the street to connect, to be in solidarity, and to build collective empowerment to win rights.

Queer liberation can only be achieved by a revolutionary politics: a rebellious existence that challenges the violence of the gender binary, normative body and sexual politics, colonial oppression, the criminalization of sex workers, and constant ecological transformation; one that starts from anti-colonial and anti-capitalist perspectives.

Our queerness opposes the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the very few who continue to profit from centuries of exploitation, genocides, wars, and all forms of colonialism. Through our queerness, we imagine and redefine alternative ways of being, of living, and of organizing. In the face of warfare and fascism, we stand firm in our determination to survive and thrive, united in revolutionary love and solidarity. We stand together to say: “None of us are free until all of us are free!”

Queer liberation is internationalist     

We understand that being at the center of imperialist power comes with the responsibility to effect change and transformation on both local and global levels, and to support ongoing struggles.

We need to demand justice and reparations for the damages that Europe – and the EU today – have inflicted on global majority countries.

We need to fight against the structures here in Germany that profit from the exploitation or the manipulation of other countries.

We need to be in solidarity with Indigenous communities around the world, demanding reparations and their self-determination.

We need to affirm our support for the struggles of those who are experiencing the effects of the European colonial order.

We are and continue to be to in solidarity with liberation, freedom, and justice struggles from around the world. Abya Yala, Turtle Island, Iran, Peru, Western Sahara, Palestine, Kurdistan, Darfur, the Syrian Revolution, Aotearoa, Tamil Eelam, Kashmir, West Papua, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, the Amazigh, the Mapuche, the Uyghur and all the people who are resisting ongoing colonial violence. We firmly oppose the constant attempts to white- and pink-wash the ongoing crimes, and oppose the policing of our voices in Germany.

While we condemn the horrendous war on Ukraine, and stand in full solidarity with the Ukrainian people, it is important to note the hypocrisy and the double standards in the solidarity manifested by Western countries. Not only in relation to other wars and injustices, but also in the racist discrimination against BIPoC and third-country refugees from Ukraine. This is another episode in the ongoing violence against BIPoC communities that we witness and experience on a daily basis, from the Afghan refugees at the Belarussian-Polish border to those people left to drown in the Mediterranean or pushed to their death by the Libyan mercenaries and Frontex, funded by the EU.

Queer&Transfeminism are at the core of our struggle for liberation

We challenge patriarchy and hetero-cis-endo-normativity and its complicity with other oppressive systems in all their manifestations: homo/transphobia, pink capitalism, trans/misogynoir and femo-/homonationalism.

We see patriarchy and cis-hetero-endo-normativity as driving agents of colonialism and capitalism; and therefore it is important to challenge these systems altogether in their entangled complicity.

Trans-exclusionary positions and far-right groups worldwide are increasingly fanning the flames of antifeminist, homo-, trans- and interphobic hate. We affirm our resistance against these currents.

Especially trans femmes and trans women are often the target of exclusion, violence and femicides, as they are vilified and marginalized even in spaces that claim to be “safer.” Transmisogyny is deadly, and we are forced to mourn too many of our trans sisters who are killed by a transmisogynist, classist, and racist system every year, like Ella Bayan just recently here in Berlin. We demand to be treated with respect by all institutions and an unconditional right to self-determination for all trans people, regardless of their residence status, gender performance, or social background.

We demand protection for intersex people from non-consensual, non-medically essential surgeries with the intent to violently force their bodies into a binary norm, which should start from birth. We demand sex self-determination. Intersex bodies are not meant to be fixed. We acknowledge the trauma experienced from surgeries and the violation of intersex bodily autonomy, sovereignty, and consent when accessing health care. We demand reparations for survivors of non-consensual surgeries. Intersex people should be allowed complete and uninhibited access to obtaining identity documents, exercising their birth and adoption rights, receiving unbiased healthcare, and securing education and employment opportunities that are free from harm and harassment.

We also stand in solidarity with all sex workers, many of whom are trans, queer, migrant, disabled, sole caregivers, and/or BIPoC, in their fight against stigma and against laws that make their work unsafe and force them into illegality. We demand the decriminalization of sex work, and the decriminialisation of migration, as the only models that support and protect sex workers. There are no bad whores, only bad laws!

Furthermore, we condemn the instrumentalization of queer rights and identities to further pinkwashing agendas and national/colonial projects. We don’t just want marriage, we want the abolition of white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy and all its institutions!

The German government and the European Union use our rights for their political and economic agendas. They only denounce the violations against our communities – which in a lot of contexts they sponsor through the political cover they give to homophobic, transphobic and anti-feminist regimes – when it plays in the favour of their interests. Our rights and our lives are not pawns for German foreign policy, and we demand that Germany and the EU stop sponsoring regimes that violate our existence.

Climate justice is queer justice

Our environment has been exploited and oppressed like our bodies, lives, and desires – and climate justice can start only with the acknowledgment that the climate emergency we are in is the consequence of 500+ years of colonialism and extractive politics in global majority countries.

The climate emergency and colonialism are deeply intertwined socioecologial issues: they manifest in genocides and forced displacement of local communities, plundering of natural resources, erasure of local knowledge, destruction of ecosystems, exploitation of peoples through low-wage labor, the exploitation of other creatures, and the pollution of land, air, and water.

Therefore we need to overcome mainstream Western narratives that center 1.5 -degree policies and the greenwashing of responsibility, and stand firm against state violence targeting climate activists like we recently saw in Lüzerath. Climate justice can be only achieved through socio-ecological transformation that is rooted in anti-colonial and anti-capitalist perspectives.

Health, education, self-determination, equal legal status, and housing are basic rights

Racialized, gender non-conforming, and precarious people are those who struggle the most to survive in this capitalist system of profit-over-people. Be it in the health system, in housing, in equal rights, or equal access.

We fight for a free, unbiased health system because the current system contributes to the precarity and marginalization of queer, intersex and trans people who face violence and discrimination, and struggle to access needed health services, including therapy for the effects of the hetero-cis-endo- and patriarchal violence that we face daily. We need a free, unprejudiced health system towards all gender identities and bodies because it is a basic human right.

We need affordable housing and the re-communalization of 240.000 houses in Berlin set in motion by DW enteignen, because housing is a basic right, and the city and the country have the resources, the space, and the capacity to make it happen. The city has voiced its opinion loud and clear, but the political powers complicit with the real-estate mafia are challenging democratic rules for their own agendas.

This also means that we need education for all. This education must respect all gender identities equally and affirm the exploration and development of our identities and sexualities.

Borders kill – and so does the Ausländerbehörde and the nation-state’s anti-migrant policies. All people are legal and all people should have the same rights to live with dignity. We will continue the fight to abolish the border regime, hold Frontex and other border mercenaries accountable, and to establish migration policies that center human lives and well-being. We will continue to fight for the facilitation of access to legal and permanent residency in Germany and in the EU for everyone who wants to practice their right to freedom of movement and residence, and for those who have to cross the imposed borders in search for survival and safety.

Agency and self-determination over our bodies and identities is a top priority in our fight. This includes dismantling all forms of criminalization and stigmatization of abortion; free and guaranteed access to the changes that people need to make to their bodies corresponding to their self-perceived gender without any kind of restrictions and pathologization; a complete ban on all traumatizing operations on intersex bodies, most of the times happening without consent at an early stage in life; a restorative model of healthcare for intersex people to respect every individual’s choice around gender identity, explore reproductive options, and offer hormonal support that allows intersex people to live self-determined lives with respect to their bodies and gender identities.

Our queer liberation is rooted in anti-militarism, anti-policing, and anti-war activism!

We strongly condemn every war, imperialist invasion, and neocolonial intervention. It is also important to denounce the German and EU/US weapon industries as well as the political and financial support they receive from tax money. The weapons and military and surveillance technologies exported by Germany are used by repressive governments and dictatorships, and are fueling civil conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. 

We are in solidarity with political prisoners all over the world, with all those who have been or still are under house arrest, and with those who are detained and tortured because of their political views. Our solidarity extends especially to those whose queerness played a substantial role in their persecution and prosecution.

As queers we are familiar with the dangerous impacts of policing, as we ourselves have been the target of police violence and the social, medical, and economic policing of our bodies, identities, and expressions. We want to build a queer world without policing, be it the armed ones in uniform or the social policing and punitive impositions we experience as migrants and racialized people on a daily basis in Germany including in the so-called left scene.

We need a world where our love for freedom, for justice, for ourselves, and for each other is the driving force. A world where we challenge each other from a position of comradely affection and learn both from our mistakes and from each other. 

None of us are free until all of us are free!