The June 2023 Linz Pride Rainbow Parade or Regenbogenparade, organised by HOSI in Linz in Austria, commemorates CSD - Christopher Street Day - and 9500 participants from the LGBTQI+ community and its allies took part.
From the narration:
Hi, my name is Deanna Allison.
I live in Austria, and in this video I’ll show you the 2023 Linz Pride parade.
This is the Volksgarten in Linz, where the parade will start. It’s a few minutes’ walk from the Hauptbahnhof, or main railway station.
As people begin to gather an hour or two before the event starts, it becomes obvious that this will be a lot bigger than the last Linz Pride parade that I attended with my partner five years ago.
That was in June 2018, when the parade gathered in the nearby and much smaller Schillerpark, but today much more room will be needed.
Today’s parade will also be longer than it was back in 2018.
So, let’s watch as the crowd gathers!
Now we’re getting close to the time that the parade sets off, and people have continued to turn up right up to the last moment.
Every tram stopping outside the park has brought a new collection of rainbowed-up people!
And finally the lead truck is moving. The parade has started.
So the front end of the parade leaves the Volksgarten and begins to move onto the Landstraße, a busy shopping street that leads down towards the Hauptplatz, the main square of the city of Linz.
And the traffic and trams have been stopped to allow us to walk in safety.
I want to join in the parade and walk with my partner, so I’m filming it in the Volksgarten then we’ll tag on near the end.
And with so many people taking part in Linz Pride today, I can see that it’s going to take a while for the end of the parade to reach us.
So let’s watch as the parade goes by.
There will be plenty of chanting in this parade.
One of the messages is that Pride is a protest. In other words, the parade is not just a big party but it is also a protest against the hostility and discrimination faced by people in the LGBTQ community.
It also commemorates the 1969 rebellion which began on Christopher Street in New York, and which was a response to a violent police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the city’s Greenwich Village neighbourhood.
And now we’ve joined the parade, near its tail end.
We’re on Landstraße and we’ve just passed the small Schillerpark, which was the gathering place for the much smaller 2018 Linz Pride parade.
There are lots of prominent Linz Pride rainbow banners decorating this street, which is great to see.
And there’s the rainbow crossing!
In today’s parade, there are also lots of chants about international solidarity.
Next, we turn left onto Bischoffstraße, which means that the traffic and trams can move again on the Landstraße!
We see the Linzer Mariendom, or Linz Cathedral, ahead on the left.
And here we have just emerged from Herrenstraße to march around the Upper Austrian parliament.
And Klosterstraße leads us onto the main square of Linz, the Hauptplatz.
On the Hauptplatz we get a great view of the extent of the Parade as it moves ahead of us.
There’s an impressive number of people!
Then we enjoy the views from the road bridge as we cross the river Danube.
And now, on the other side of the river, we are getting close to the end of the parade.
Back in 2018, the parade ended outside the Ars Electronica Center, but there’s not enough space there for this larger parade.
Instead, we walk a bit further and reach a large car park near the river which has been transformed into a big beer garden, complete with various stalls and a stage for the Pride Open Air show.
And what a great place this turned out to be, with plenty of seating and the opportunity to rest with a drink and enjoy the great atmosphere!
I’ve got to say, this Pride parade from beginning to end was a brilliant experience, with an estimated attendance of 9500.
Well done to HOSI Linz, the organisers for all the hard work.
And to top it off, between the Pride Open Air show and the river was the Streetfood Market, which was not officially part of Pride but felt as if it was, adding to the atmosphere of the day.
We left Linz tired but happy!
5 сен 2024
