Disability rights activists fight for access to cities Pride events – POLITICO

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Cobblestones, steep inclines, gravel – for members of the LGBTQ+ community with disabilities, seemingly small obstacles in the route of a Pride march through a city can mean they are left out and forced to look aside .

This is something Pride organizers are only slowly beginning to address.

“Pride is the biggest event of the year for queer people,” said Ingrid Thunem, a Paralympic swimmer and activist who leads the Norwegian Association of Young People with Disabilities. “It’s an event to celebrate, to protest, to socialize… but we [have been] contacted by homosexual handicapped people who said to us: ‘Why can’t we go to the parade? “We feel left out.”

Steve Taylor, Board Member of European Association of Pride Organizers (EPOA) and general secretary of Copenhagen Pride, said the city’s infrastructure is a key part of the problem.

“From their history, [Europe’s] capitals are not accessible places,” he said. “Pride [organizers] can take steps to make events as accessible as possible… When the city’s infrastructure is working against you, it’s a challenge.

Beyond the physical barriers, people with disabilities may face additional barriers, such as a lack of sign language interpretation or sensory stimulation overload, which require special attention to enable them to participate in events. such a scale.

Although local authorities have a legal obligation to ensure accessibility at events like Pride, they often delegate the issue to the event organizers themselves, for whom the issue has not been a top priority.

It’s only been in the past 10 years that Pride organizers have begun to take the issue of accessibility seriously, Taylor said. “He is [still] seen as something we do, rather than something that is integral to who we are.

As Pride Marches now return after a long hiatus following the pandemic, activists are determined “to highlight issues such as lack of accessibility” so that LGBTQ+ people with disabilities “feel accepted and like they weren’t alone,” Thunem said.

The spirit of pride

Activists have made inroads in many cities in recent years, but say they continue to meet resistance.

In the Italian city of Bologna, a local organization for LGBTQ+ people with disabilities, Jump, pulled out of the city’s 2017 Pride celebrations after organizers refused to change the route.

“The starting point of the parade was at Cavaticcio Park, which is located at the bottom of a steep slope,” said Jump activist Fabio Mantovani. “If you are in a wheelchair, you need someone to help you because the risk of injury is quite high: even when you reach the bottom, the cobbled pavement makes it almost impossible to move.”

Jump’s decision to boycott the event caused a rift in the local LGBTQ+ community: “They accused us of betraying the spirit of Pride…but the slogan for that year’s march was”Space to be proud“, and it seemed really contradictory to us that people with disabilities couldn’t be in that space,” Mantovani said.

But it also had an impact. In 2018, the organizers moved the starting point of the march to the Margherita Gardens – a larger and more accessible park.

Change was more difficult to obtain by dealing directly with the local administration of Bologna, which failed to renovate the city’s LGBTQ+ center to make it accessible to people with disabilities.

“A community that makes inclusion one of its core values ​​cannot be headquartered in a space that excludes certain people or puts them in a humiliating situation,” said a Jump activist who sued the administration. in 2017 and asked to remain anonymous.

A local court in 2020 ordered the city to make the building more accessible. But renovation work has been slow and it seems likely that the June 2022 completion deadline will be missed.

“LGBTQ+ spaces are already a minority in cities, and they are very important for people who are already discriminated against. If you can’t even access those spaces, then you’re completely left out… you’re a double minority,” the activist said.

POLITICO contacted Bologna City Hall for comment but received no response.

Go off the beaten track

Not all Pride organizers have been reluctant to accommodate the needs of LGBTQ+ people with disabilities.

EPOA’s Taylor said Pride events like the one in London had stewards introduced to help and guide people with reduced mobility and created quiet spaces dedicated to people with autism and sensory disorders.

To this year Belgian pridewhich took place in Brussels on May 21, there were sign language interpreters for all announcements and speeches.

In Cremona, Italyorganizers handed out free earplugs to people with sensory overload or noise sensitivity and offered a volunteer stewardship service to help people with limited eyesight.

“Cities and organizations sometimes cancel the need to do something by saying, ‘Oh, this is too hard,'” Taylor said. “But really, you just have to think creatively about how you make sure something is accessible.”

“People say they don’t have money, but it’s also a political choice where you invest your money,” said Mher Hakobyan, accessibility manager at the European Disability Forum. “Often it’s not the lack of resources, but rather what you need to invest in first.”

These adjustments are key to recognizing the existence – and needs – of a minority within the LGBTQ+ community, activists say.

The community “has struggled for so long to prove that being queer is not a disease,” Thunem said, referring to the fear and stigma attached to the AIDS epidemic.

Because LGBTQ+ groups have generally worked hard to project an image of health and fitness“It’s hard to remember that there are people who can be both gay and wheelchair bound or blind,” Thunem said.

Hakobyan stressed that “there is a lot of work to be done” to ensure people with disabilities feel welcome at Pride events.

“The Stonewall Riots – which started the Pride movement – ​​were led by people whose bodies did not correspond to the normsaid Mantovani of Jump. “At Pride, everyone should be able to show up with their body and find their place.”

“And if I can’t show up with the body I have, what’s the point of coming out as gay?”

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