It's not the date, it's the fight

Gay Pride Day, known as LGTBIQ Pride Day where we include groups of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, queers... is celebrated on June 28 and has its origin in the regrettable incidents that occurred in 1969 in the New York pub Stonewall Inn. Located in Greenwich Village, a place that was frequented by homosexuals. In the early morning of June 28, the New York Police Department raided that establishment, but for the first time in history they refused to accept a system that treated them as pariahs and systematically violated the most fundamental rights of people.

It is essential and special to remember Marsha P. Johnson, who has been considered one of the main activists in the clashes with the police during the New York riots, a transsexual, bisexual, African-American woman with HIV who worked as a prostitute on the same street and who later founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with the aim of providing support to the most excluded LGTBI people and homeless trans women, playing a relevant role in the fight against HIV, in the Act Up collective.

That date is inevitably linked to the sad day of November 27, 1978 when the mayor of San Francisco and his popular councilman Harvey Milk, a tireless fighter for the rights of the community, at that time, of gay pride, were assassinated. Milk became the first politician to openly declare himself homosexual in all of the USA. Milk did not know how great his work would become. Today he is one of the symbols of a struggle that still continues. His memory, like that of many others, rests somewhere over the rainbow.

The celebration of these days has no other reason, no other hope than to continue shedding light in those places where those who feel different are still persecuted, discriminated against and even killed, those who love in a natural way, and to put an end to these regrettable attitudes unworthy of civilized human beings.

This is a transversal movement, which crosses in all directions and which affects from the local to the global, it is a movement that concerns us and that should occupy us all. Globally, it is not about ideologies, it is about inclusion, it is not about fags, dykes and trávelos, it is about respect, it is not about sick people, it is about tolerance, because friends, love is not hidden, it is spontaneous, natural and does not understand labels, it is extremely strong, stronger than all the rage and anger combined.

And what do we do from the local level? It is a question that makes me look back with pride and be able to boast of a Yaiza town hall that has worried, worries and will continue to worry that inclusion, tolerance and respect are not just words, but continue to be a struggle to make it effective, real, and if you allow me the expression "feelable". Without forgetting that the Equality area of this institution separated from the Social Services area in 2015 to have its own team and be fully operational every day of the year in this fight and that since then it has a budget. It is an honor for this councilman to manage this exciting task with a super team of dedicated and prepared people who contribute everything to the council.

We were pioneers in remembering the existence of the LGTBI community in Lanzarote and in carrying out actions aimed at facilitating integration. With symbolic acts and with real acts such as the LGTBI coexistence projects in schools or the last one proposed, the "Yaiza Simply Love" culture and pride festival that had to be suspended due to the Covid19 pandemic, but that we will surely have the opportunity to celebrate soon.

We have tried and will continue to do so to link the idea, which is real, of the LGTBI movement with culture in all its forms, in all its expressions, only then will we end the intellectual poverty of those who refuse to accept what is already normal in the street, small resistances that remind us that June 28 is not the date, it is the struggle.

By Daniel Medina. Councilor for Culture, Youth and Equality of the Yaiza City Council.