Our planned event for the 2020 Pride series of events, “Is Pride Exploited? – The Relations Between Multinational Companies, Politics and LGBTQ Movements” was not accepted by the organizers of Budapest Pride, so we are not preparing our own event this year.
Our program would have been exciting because we would have been pushing a very actual question. Both in society and the LGBTQ community, the question is becoming more and more intense how the capitalist interests of multinational companies are harmonized with the support of LGBTQ companies. So this program would have been shaped around a proper topic and in addition, besides the visions of our guests from the European Union, domestic political organizations and multinational companies, it would have given space for the views of LGBTQ people and NGOs.
The refusal of the organizers of Budapest Pride was partially justified, as the reduction of the previously one-month period clearly decreases the number of possible programs. But our program actually fits into this year’s motto (Take Your Future Back!), as the involvement of the LGBTQ society, companies, reasonable capitalism criticism and the political side on this issue will be exactly one of the cornerstones of the future. And, of course, this year we would have organized the entire program ourselves (location, resources, police consultation, etc.), so we would not have imposed more tasks on the organizers of Budapest Pride. And publishing our program on the web is not a serious extra task for them.
The absence of our program does not mean that we will not bring this very important topic to the LGBTQ people in any way anyway, because based on feedbacks, people are interested. And the fact that our program is missing doesn’t mean, of course, that we won’t be attending this year’s Pride Festival.