This year’s Ljubljana Pride Festival presents just under two weeks of LGBTIQ+ activities and events celebrating all the colours of the rainbow in the capital. It started yesterday, 11 June, and ends on Saturday 22 with the annual parade through the city that itself ends in Novi trg with speeches and live performances, before moving on into various clubs and other venues around town.
ljubljanapride.org
Last year the theme was intersectionality, and this year’s Pride is motivated by a further call for solidarity and mobilisation among all marginalised groups, with the aim of overcoming a culture of hate, and thus to combat the promotion of fear of and hostility towards “the other” with openness, tolerance and love.
Or as Nina Perger of the Ljubljana Pride Association writes:
With every silence and every lack of response, the line of acceptable political strategies and society building moves further in the wrong direction - further towards normalising and accepting the politics of fear and hate that are rooted in the rhetoric of the victim complex and moral panic, and of intimidation and bullying. Every time we stay silent, what is at least quietly unacceptable today becomes acceptable tomorrow.
Th full (English) program of events – with talks, debates, music, workshops, parties, a roller derby and more – can be found here, while details of the Pride March (Saturday 22 June) are here. Pride’s Facebook page can be found here, while all out stories on the community are here.
