This is a call from the activists organizing Rad Pride, and all interested groups/collectives are invited to endorse it and organize to be present in the streets on August 9, 2025 at 9:30pm at Square Émilie Gamelin.
This call is launched collectively by : P!nk Bloc, Fags, Traps, Brûlances, FLIP, OPEN Maisonneuve.
We radical and revolutionary queers call on all individuals, groups, collectives and affinities who refuse to see their pride instrumentalized by the institutions that oppress them Rad Pride is a refusal of what is offered to us, a refusal to betray ourselves, and a refusal to deny our history of struggle in order to gain legitimacy in the eyes of a system that oppresses us. On August 9, Rad Pride returns to the streets for a third edition. What we're planning isn't a parade: it's an act of rupture, memory, joy and collective anger.
Pride was never designed to please mayors or banks. It was born of riots, refusal and solidarity between the most marginalized. August 9 will not be a commemoration emptied of its history - instead, it will be a living repossession. We refuse to march under surveillance, in the company of sponsors and institutions complicit in colonial violence.
Every year, Montreal Pride puts on a show emptied of its revolutionary substance: flags in the windows of bourgeois businesses, empty slogans, partnerships with genocidal companies. A parade that accompanies social cleansing operations in the Village, driving our siblings off the streets. A pretext for the cops to attack queers who denounce the genocide in Palestine and the pinkwashing of the Zionist project. We call for the rejection of any recuperation of our history.
There is no pride in this complicity. No pride in alliances with the police. No pride in a celebration that excludes angry queers, precarious trans people, undesirables, and those in hoods. No pride while our siblings are massacred in Palestine. No pride in a space where the only rules are those of the rich, cis, dominant and white.
Queer radicalism is the legacy of those who fought for our existence, nurtured by trans struggles, care collectives, tds, squatters, HIV-positive activists, old dykes, young undocumented queers, and all those who refuse to bend the knee. Let's seize this memory and honor it.
Our queerness is by definition political. It is a refusal of order, a collective construction originating on the margins and forged in rage and care. It doesn't ask for a seat at the table of power - it overturns it..
Rad Pride belongs to no one. It is not homogeneous. It's leather, balaclava, sparkles, silence and screams. It brings together those who reject instrumentalization, corporate rules, consensual discourse and sanitized images. It's for all queers of conscience. We're outlining its contours - it's up to you to fill it in, to inhabit it, to embody it.
We want to take back the streets, but also the night: the night that unites subversive parties and organized anger. A night where autonomy is real, where joy becomes a weapon, where pride - real pride - is dangerous.
On August 9, we won't be going out to put on a pretty face, but to assert the power of our movement, in combativeness and festivity. We'll use the night to honor our lives, our anger, our memories and our solidarity. Not to beg to be tolerated, but to build a world in opposition to the one they're trying to impose on us.
Let's take back what's ours.
Our Pride is not in the clutches of Fierté Montréal, but in the streets, in the night, in dissent.
If you recognize yourself in this radical pride, this call is for you. cet appel est pour vous.
To you who know that this world is not for you.
To you who refuse to become pawns of imperialist discourses.
To you who suffer and resist.
To you who dream of something better.
Join us Saturday August 9 at 9:30pm at Square Émilie-Gamelin for the 3rd RAD PRIDE.
To sign the call
A call from:
P!nk Bloc Mtl
TRAPS
FAGS
FLIP
OPEN Maisonneuve
Brûlances
Other signatories
To come