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!