In our April 3, 2020 release, we announced the postponement of the Pride Marseille from August 28 to September 5, while specifying that these dates remained "however hypothetical in the current context" and that in "depending on the evolution of this crisis"we were not "unfortunately not able to guarantee that they can be maintained".
At its last meeting, after a long year of mobilization, work and organization, the Inter-Association and Business Steering Committee decided, with much bitterness, to modify the programming of the Pride Marseille and to cancel the 2020 edition of the Pride March and Festival.
Nevertheless, the Pride Marseille will take place from August 28 to September 5, around an alternative programming and the PrideWeek of activist, cultural and festive events. In this particular context, the Committee has also decided to participate, on June 28, in the global mobilization of the Global Pride.
The postponement of the March and the Pride Festival to a later date was once considered too risky. The probability of an epidemic wave is higher in the fall or winter. Moreover, a new postponement would delay the organization of the 2021 edition.
Gathered in a steering committee to take this heavy responsibility, our associative partners and merchants, followed the recommendations of the association's board Pride Marseille Organization(FMO). They built their decision around the following thoughts:
- To date, the governmental recommendations are clear: large gatherings must be avoided, social distancing is recommended as well as the respect of barrier gestures. These are all elements that seem incompatible with the organization of our main events.
- We do not have sufficient visibility as to the responsibilities that would fall to us for the safety of the public. The health protocols that would be imposed on us are not yet known and our organization, based exclusively on volunteers, does not have the means, today, to guarantee the respect of these possible protocols.
- Despite the support of our institutional partners, the upcoming municipal elections increase the uncertainty of our organization. Similarly, our private partners do not have the economic strength to support us this year.
Under these conditions, despite the implementation of many alternative solutions, the Pride Marseille Organization considered that it was not reasonable to maintain these events as they were.
For several years, our professionalism and our respect for the rules of technical organization and safety have enabled us to reassure our public and private partners. This confidence, essential to the sustainability of the Pride MarseilleThis could have been jeopardized if we had persisted in maintaining a March and a Festival for which we could not guarantee the seriousness of the organization.
Finally, for the Steering Committee and for the Bureau of Pride Marseille OrganizationThe risk of creating a cluster that could lead to a wave of discrimination against our communities did not seem acceptable to us.
We would therefore like to apologize to the various artists who made up the line up of this edition, with our private service providers who, today, even more than usual needed to work, and finally with our audiences.
The Pride Marseille 2020 will therefore reinvent itself around an alternative programming that will not impose significant physical gatherings:
1 - Member of theInterPride (International Pride Coordination), the Pride Marseille invites you to participate in the June 27 global mobilization of the Global Pride. Around the theme "Exist - Persist - Resist". these 24 hours of streaming will gather more than 350,000 people from all over the world.
2 - Creation of a major communication campaign around the global theme of Global Pride. Entitled "Exist, Persist, Resist: don't forget our struggles for equal rights"This campaign will allow the Pride Marseille to invest the public space, to be visible and to carry its claims in a different but nevertheless effective way.
3 - The PrideWeek will take place from June 28 to September 5, with a program of activist events organized by our associations (exhibitions, conferences and debates, screenings, meetings, etc.) and festive events offered by our businesses.
4 - On Saturday, September 5, the Pride Marseille will offer 5 hours of live streaming programs from different places in Marseille. On this occasion, you will be invited to color Marseille with the colors of the Rainbow.
Despite the disappointment and absence of the Pride March and Festival, we are proud to offer you a quality alternative and to invest the public space in a different way. We are convinced that this choice will allow us to perpetuate the quality of organization of the Pride Marseille for 2021 and future editions.
In these troubled times, both from a health and political perspective, the Pride Marseillecalls on all the active forces of our communities to gather and unite around the militancy of our associations, around our businesses which suffer economically and which are essential links for the solidarity, prevention and socialization of our public, and around the Pride Marseillewhich is the spearhead of our mobilizations with local institutions.
Our struggles are far from over. If for many of us, daily life seems easier or more comfortable, we have to do it. "standardized"We must not forget our sisters and brothers, often in precarious situations, who are still on the sidelines of our great family. We must not forget the PMA and its access to trans people, whose adoption has been postponed again.
These communities are not in the minority, but simply invisible, even though they have laid the foundations of our struggles, and are at the origin of Stonewall and our Pride.
These invisible sisters and brothers need Pride, and all of us, to obtain the rights that are cruelly lacking and yet are the most basic.
Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Sex worker, Racialized, you who do not respond to the social injunction, to the norm, you who want to be free of your identity, of your body, you must know that with or without the March, the Pride Marseille will always be at your side to carry, proud and united, our claims and our fights.