On June 15, 2018 the Night Pride is being organized in Lyon, on the lands of Sergeant Collon, in one of the most fascist and racist cities in France, on grounds where our lives and our rights as trans, bi, gay, lesbian and intersex people are increasingly threatened, especially as self‑proclaimed “anti‑trans” brigades are emerging, and as we see a rise in transphobic, homophobic, lesbophobic, biphobic and racist attacks here in our city.

To make this Pride — where we take the streets — possible under the best conditions, with the best possible equipment, we need your financial support. For those who can, every contribution, however small, matters — there is no donation that is useless. We hope to see many of you that evening, to count on your presence and strength on the ground, and we will do everything in our power to make this Pride accessible to everyone. For more information, here is the press release:


"Why a Night Pride?

At the time we are writing this statement, our comrade Moussa, an AIDES activist originally from Guinea, forced to leave his country because of his sexual orientation, is in pretrial detention.
Why? The charge concerns his refusal twice to board a plane to return to his country of origin where he risks death or imprisonment. On June 12 his trial will take place and he faces deportation and/or prison. In France, homosexuality has not been officially illegal since 1982, yet Moussa is treated like a criminal because he is homosexual, Black, and undocumented. This situation, like so many others, is an illustration of shitty racist and neoliberal policies.

On the occasion of this second Night Pride in Lyon, we reaffirm our radically political and reivindicative stance, and we want to create a new space of struggle.
However, we do not oppose the official Pride, which we call on people to join the next day, since it covers a wide range of non‑heterosexual struggles and remains a necessary festive and political moment, especially in a backward, bourgeois city like Lyon.

Nevertheless, we believe that only an autonomous Night Pride in non‑mixed spaces will be able to send an uncompromising message against the commodification and instrumentalization of our struggles: we refuse to be a friendly veneer for state fascism and neoliberal violence. The Night Pride is not a “gay pride” led by nationalist, Macronist, white and bourgeois spokespersons. Our prides are neither corporate nor national! We do not want the Marseillaise, nor corporate floats or a certain sold‑out unionism (like the CFDT...), nor cops nor FLAG (an association of LGBT cops).

We want a march that reflects our nonconforming and protesting identities, heir to the Stonewall riots (an episode of popular uprising and political self‑defense against the armed forces of a racist police state). We claim this Night Pride as a space of solidarity between struggles, for the emancipation of everyone, because we are:

Feminists: we fight for everyone’s right to control their own bodies. We claim free and accessible abortion, medically assisted procreation (PMA) for everyone as well as surrogacy (GPA), an end to mutilations of intersex people and an end to the repression of sex workers.
STOP the trivialization of violence against people assigned female at birth and/or identified as women.
Rape is a crime. On May 16, 2018 the National Assembly passed a law that, notably, reclassifies rape of minors without force, threats or surprise as a mere "sexual assault with penetration" judged as a misdemeanor in criminal court rather than a crime to be tried by assize courts. Words matter! This reform initiated by the Macron government, which has reduced the budget for combating sexual violence, tramples on the idea of consent — already too little present in our society — and strengthens rape culture.
Whether women are dressed more or less covered, it is their choice! The bodies of white women as much as those of non‑white women do not belong to you; they are theirs alone.

Antiracists: we have had enough of state racism, discrimination in housing and hiring, the hardships faced in higher education by people from working‑class neighborhoods, the racist historical teaching that erases our memories and flattens our histories, the ORE law on selection that scorns our future, racial profiling/stop‑and‑search whose racist facial profiling we witnessed at the previous Night Pride and for which racialized, non‑white people are the primary targets.
Enough of police violence and its deaths that have been rising for years — Zyed, Bouna, Théo and Adama, we do not forget, we do not forgive.
We are tired of being made to feel that this is not our home. As long as our bodies keep creaking, we will keep reminding you that there will be no return to the country — here is OUR HOME.

Anticolonialists: we are fed up with the treatment of migrants, fed up with Collomb making us believe there are “good” and “bad” migrants, fed up with the complacency toward militias and far‑right groups who are free to move when it comes to blocking roads, attacking or killing. Enough of neocolonial policies in France and abroad, of the exoticization of non‑white bodies within the LGBTI community as well as their dehumanization, of the instrumentalization of our lives for racist ends: homonationalism or pinkwashing, we don’t want it! Migrants are welcome here, despite your inhuman desire to crush their lives. Freedom of movement for people is not only valid when it serves the capitalist machine.

Anticapitalists: we fight gay corporate culture, consumerism, and antisocial policies that worsen poverty and precariousness, contributing to the isolation and vulnerability of the most fragile among us — especially trans people, racialized people, sex workers, people with disabilities, people living with HIV, neuroatypical people — depriving them of access to rights, housing, work and decent healthcare.
We refuse the gentrification of our struggles, ready to act as cover for a disgusting economic liberalism.
Our antiracist, trans, gay, bi, lesbian, intersex, queer and feminist struggles are not secondary or parallel to anticapitalist struggle — we think struggle globally. We think the interconnection of oppressions. We think intersectional struggles.

Finally, as queer people, we obviously denounce the injunctions to heteronormativity and cisnormativity, binary categories and queerphobia that exclude and push young and old people onto the streets or to suicide.
We are fed up with these stigmatizing and hateful discourses, which are everywhere — in the streets, at school, among psychologists, doctors, in prisons, in the media, in history books... and in fancy neighborhoods too!
The “Manif’ pour tous” (lol) came out into the streets to shout insults at us, to protest a bit of awareness‑raising on gender stereotypes, while Cardinal Barbarin (to name but one) has shut up for years about proven acts of pedophilia committed by his subordinates. We are sick of the specific violences suffered by queer people. And when we learn, yet again, that even at parties we thought were ours a friend was beaten for defending a non‑mixed space, that attacks keep multiplying, that rapes continue — again and again — our rage only grows.
Not only will we continue to dance and live without bowing our heads, but we will fight back as long as necessary. We will fight to the end for the emancipation of everyone in a logic of interlocking oppressions.

So we invite you to diverge, to show up, shout, and dance with us on Friday, June 15.

Why a Night Pride in chosen mixity?
Trans, gays, bi people, lesbians, non‑binary, intersex, butch, queens, witches, truckers, sluts, faggots, we claim the right to “harm” institutional struggles that do not represent us.
Our lives, our desires, our choices do not fit into your categories and will not be tamed.
We are neither capitalizable nor governable!
Why do we want this Night Pride to be a chosen‑mixity event among queer people?
Because it is important for us to take back the street at night, together, just us.
Because given the recent — but constant — transphobic, homophobic, sexist and racist attacks, we want to show the whole city how strong and how many we are.
Because we are too often silenced or made invisible, and we want to reclaim the narrative of our lives.
Because non‑mixity is a necessary tool for that purpose, and we have very few spaces to meet and assert ourselves.
Our feminist and other nonconforming allies will understand, and we will be happy to meet them the following day for a radically flamboyant mixed march during the daytime Pride!

- To make this Night Pride truly accessible and beautiful and honoring for all concerned, for people with disabilities who want to participate: we are already thinking about how to make this demonstration as accessible as possible, but do not hesitate to contact us (private message to the event organizers, for example) to tell us your specific needs, to alert us to things we may not yet have taken into account -"