Statement regarding the closing down of parties by Lisbon authorities
Last Saturday, we were confronted with not one, but two party venues closing down on us because of police interference.
We don’t know exactly what caused it, but we do see a pattern. We’re looking for solutions, like everyone with a heart for our queer community does.
In queer history, authorities have always tried to shut us down. What is noteworthy in both cases is that the parties were not primarily queer. Though we do acknowledge that both venues are always queer-supportive. We love going there.
We do see a historical pattern in what is going on. Without knowing exactly what happened behind the scenes, we don’t just see that queer(-related) events in Lisbon are increasingly targeted, but also that gentrification and “political interference” are reaching a critical level in certain areas of the city.
As a community, we can—and should—respond to this increase in attacks. There are different ways to do that.
The first is to find out what exactly happened last weekend. We were there. Though we were not informed and, quite frankly, were enormously surprised and upset, we have no doubt that the problem is structural and political. Which means, for instance, that if we organise a protest, we should do that in a structural and political way, also taking other/earlier raids on these and other locations into consideration. In a practical sense, with the country on holiday until the end of August, we believe from experience that a protest should not happen before September. We understand the eagerness to protest, and would not disagree with any spontaneous protests, but in the long run, our focus should be on the future.
The second is based on the fact that we are a flexible and creative community. We can and we should find alternative ways to organise events, serving our queer community differently. We should not have to depend on authorities like we do now. We can find alternatives, such as daytime parties. They might not be at the best times, but in our experience, the best parties are more about the experience/the venue/the performers/the audience, than about the time of day. We believe we are able to make that work for us.
Together.
That is why we will launch our event “The Reset” on the 26th of September. It will be different. It will be fully queer and we want to make sure that it will be free from any form of interference.
As a queer community, we are used to being divided by authorities. Anyone can see what is happening in Lisbon; there is really nothing new here. So the main thing we should focus on now is our unity. We should not rush into a protest without knowing exactly what is going on. That will not help our credibility. It will divide us. We should gather forces, find out exactly what is going on and which players are involved, but also show that we simply will not stop being who we are.
Being performers and organisers ourselves, we won’t stop fighting either, we won’t stop supporting our communities, our favourite queer venues, and we won’t stop organising valuable experiences.
We believe that there is a way forward—there always is. Everyone in our community has an equal role to play, and we certainly believe each of us adds a different layer of creativity to our fight. We are inspired by the responses leading up to “The Reset”. We are happy to offer our energy to the fight, because we deeply believe in our queer community and its future.
And We’re Not Going Anywhere
Alfred (Rayge.Uncovered)
Oliver (The AuraGrio)
Leave a Reply