Thousands of people, including many young people, took part this Saturday afternoon in the LGBTQ+ Pride march in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Toulouse (Haute-Garonne).

March for LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. After the success of the Parisian edition, the Pride march is back this Saturday, July 2. In the Marseille city, a colorful crowd of 12,000 people took over the Saint-Charles station district before heading towards the Old Port. Among them, Jean-Louis Rougeron, LGBTQ+ relay for Amnesty International, expressed concern to AFP about the threat to these rights in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

More than 10,000 participants also danced and applauded speakers in the city center of the pink city. On the Place du Capitole, they were invited to “enjoy without hindrance” and to fight against “shame, ignorance, violence” anti-LGBTQ +.

Politics in the middle of rainbows

“It’s with the pedals that we move forward”, “Jesus said to love everyone, I took him at his word”, “well done lesbians”… If the slogans could be amusing, they weren’t were no less impactful. The Pride march has a political character that fights against all forms of discrimination, including racism within LGBTQ+ communities or the fetishization of transgender people.

“There is homophobia but also racism. And there are still a lot of social inequalities and a lot of attacks,” a young protester told AFP. A second lamented the lack of knowledge of the Alternative Pride marches.

Because in recent years, in addition to the usual demonstrations, alternative marches have appeared, accelerated slogans and often more protesting demands.

At the end of May, the Pride of the suburbs had thus gathered more than 5,000 people in Saint-Denis to defend the rights of LGBTQI + people residing in working-class neighborhoods. Nearly 50,000 demonstrators also gathered in Paris on June 19, for the “Radical Pride”, anti-capitalist and anti-racist.