According to the organizers, 800'000 took the sunny streets of Paris
Visit our exclusive photo gallery of the Paris Pride
Because of the political agenda - this year pride is the last before next year’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections – many politicians and potential candidates to the presidency were seen in the streets of the French capital.
And thus, many candidates and potential candidates invited themselves to the march creating a disorder with the medias in the first rows. After 1 hour, the march did not move by more than 150 meter. Finally many high ranked politicians left shortly after having made their declarations to the medias and left the space for the marche to move further under the supervision of Camille Barre.
Originally, the Paris Gay Pride was renamed some 10 years ago “Marche des Fiertés” in order to associate more widely lesbian, bi and trans-sexuals to the event.
It was hard to find out who was not at the Paris marche among the 78 different floats among which LGBT groups fom Air France, Electrical Companies, City Hall, Police, Hospitals…Diversity was one of the key factor of the success of this years’ s edition with floats from the Asian, Jewish , Lebanese, or Catholic LGBT organizations.
Like last year, all the floats switched off the music at 4pm for 3 minutes of silence in the memory of the victims of AIDS. But when talking about music… there was enough for all tastes ! Techno, house, rock, alternative, dance : The main streets of Paris have been changed into a giant dance floor for a few hours.
Russian and Polish were honorary guests of the Paris Pride with Nikolai Alekseev representing Project GayRussia and Robert Biedron representing KPH. A bus was showing the logos of both eastern european LGBT organizations.
Among the French who came to Moscow for the Moscow Pride ’06 festival, Philippe Lasnier, Pierre Serne, Richard Sanchez, Maxence de Barros and Catherine Tripon could be seen in the first rows of the marche. The Good news is that Pierre Serne - who was beaten by skinheads on May 27th - fully recovered.
Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris insisted to give his support once again to Russian activists “Keep up doing the good job”.
Let's try to imagine one day having in the streets of Moscow floats in the colours of Aeroflot, RAO EES (electrical company) ? But more surprising would be to have one from Moscow Police or from… the LGBT group of the Moscow City Hall.
GayRussia.Ru, from Paris
