The Free

Anti-Racist & Proud @ Bristol Pride Parade

Join the “Anti-Racist and Proud” block at Bristol’s Pride Parade

14th July: 11am: from Berkeley Square (BS8)

We call on Bristol’s LGBTQI community, friends and families, to join us on the “Anti-Racist and Proud” block on the We Are: Proud Parade.

We encourage you to wear Black and Pink, colours of pride, solidarity and freedom for LGBTQI people.

NO EDL IN BRISTOL, NO EDL AT BRISTOL PRIDE

“A “Pride” event is nothing if not political: a supreme demonstration of communities coming together to celebrate their diversity and often in the face of negativity from the fringes of those communities. In that regard a “Pride” event must always confront prejudice and show those who hold prejudices that they are at the edges of society, standing increasingly alone.” – Imaan, a UK group which supports LGBT Muslim people, families and friends

In the summer of 1969, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex people in New York fought back against police violence at the Stonewall Inn. The following year Gay Liberation Day was organised to commemorate this Stonewall Uprising, to build a larger struggle of LGBTQI people and to work with other liberation movements. This is our history, and the history of Bristol’s We Are: Proud event.

The English Defence League, a far right movement, intend to march in Bristol on the same day as this year’s Bristol Pride. The EDL state that they are not racist, and claim that they are defending women’s and gay rights in the face of Islam. We challenge their position and know them to be a racist organisation who are attempting to use our LGBTQI communities to legitimise their racism.

The far right has been, and continues to be, an enemy rather than an ally in the fight for our sexual freedoms. On numerous marches staged by the EDL there have been racially motivated attacks and violence, as well as homophobic slurs thrown at any opposition

We, a collective of Bristol Queers, oppose all forms of oppression, including religious fundamentalism. We will fight homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in our daily lives, and we will fight racism, nationalism and Islamophobia within and beyond our own LGBTQI community.

We refuse to allow the EDL to use “gay rights” as a tool to further their racist agenda, and we believe that here in 2012 it is as important as ever for us to take a firm and explicitly anti-racist stand.

More info:
• Find Bristol Queercafe on Facebook
• Twitter: @stopedl #stopedl
• Updates on www.bristol.indymedia.org
• www.antifascistnetwork.wordpress.com

Reproduced via – http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/709833

Liverpool Antifascists

The EDL and Bristol Pride (swindongirl.wordpress.com)
Activist Group to Protest San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade (bilerico.com)
Berlin gay pride parade attracts 700,000 participants (rawstory.com)
Bristol: Gay Pride wins as fascists fizzle out. (thefreeonline.wordpress.com)
Seven arrested amid Bristol EDL rally (independent.co.uk)

‘The Free’..how capitalism fell..ebook here.

After Rio, we know.. Governments have given up on the planet.

George Monbiot laments the craven sellout to rampant consumer capitalism as climate change and a host of environmental emergencies destroy conditions for life on the planet. His answer is not workers revolution nor assassinating billionaires, but local ‘rewilding’ to at least delay the biosphere’s collapse.

After Rio, we know. Governments have given up on the planet

The post-summit pledge was an admission of defeat against consumer capitalism. But we can still salvage the natural world
It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth’s living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue “sustained growth“, the primary cause of the biosphere’s losses. Continue reading “After Rio, we know.. Governments have given up on the planet.”

The DOOM LOOP: banks and States in Death Embrace !

In a vicious cycle of sorts, banks and states thus spin down together like two entangled paragliders caught in a mutual embrace of death.

Not excessive government spending but excessive bank lending lies at the root of the eurozone crisis. Here’s why the bankers, not the people, should pay.

We’ve been listening to the same tired old story for almost three years now: if governments don’t cut back on their reckless spending, the euro crisis will escalate and the world will face catastrophe. Collapsing banks, spiraling unemployment, rioting workers — all are said to be the direct result of irresponsible fiscal policies in the lead-up to the worst crisis since the 1930s. And if government is to blame for these ills, austerity is certainly its only cure.

“But hold on,” some hundreds of thousands of protestershave been asking over the past year, “if governments were spending excessive amounts of money, then where did all this money come from? And if we are running out of cash so rapidly that we need to sacrifice social security, education, healthcare and hard-earned pensions in order to keep our heads above the water, then why is there somehow always money left for the bankers when they run into trouble?”