June means Pride Month and Pride Month means heading out to march! On the 2nd June we were in Düsseldorf, capital of North Rhine-Westphalia.
On the 28th of June, 1969, at dawn, in a New York bar called Stonewall Inn the gay and trans community rose up against the regular raids and assaults from the police. In the memory of this event June is known as the month of LGBTQ+ pride and this is when most related programs are held.
In memory of this historical event in Germany the LGBTQ+ demonstration is called Christopher Street Day (or CSD for short) instead of Pride. The reason for this choice of name is that the historical Stonewall Inn is on Christopher Street.
From May to August more than 60 cities are holding a Christopher Street Day all across Germany. We visited the Düsseldorf CSD – held this year for the 15th time.
The march started out from the square beside the train station at 2pm, with about 2000 people. We reached the banks of the Rhine at 4pm where the tents of various LGBTQ+ organisations and political parties, catering stands and a huge stage awaited the crowd (now roughly twice its original size). The majority of those actually marching were young and mostly represented the trans community. Older people were strolling along with us on the side-lines, holding hands with their partners. In the usual forest of rainbow flags we spotted many trans, genderfluid and intersex ones, along with many more we’ve never seen before, so next time we’ll have to be more prepared. Now let’s see the pictures:
Transated by Zsófia Ziaja
