Friday, May 22, 2009

Moscow Pride Organizers Claim PR Win

GayCityNews - Moscow Pride Organizers Claim PR Win

Good article by Doug Ireland

Violent Suppression of Gathering Fails to Dampen Activist Triumph

For the fourth year in a row, an attempt to have a Moscow Gay Pride March was violently broken up by police on Saturday, May 16, and 40 LGBT activists were arrested. Still, Pride organizers claimed a propaganda victory.

'Our goal was to have the maximum visibility with the minimum damage to activists,' Nicolai Alexeyv, the 33-year-old lawyer who has been the lead organizer of these Moscow Pride events since their inception, told Gay City News by telephone from Moscow. 'By careful planning, we cheated the police, obtained a huge amount of publicity for LGBT rights in Russia, avoided the homophobic thugs who were staging a counter-demonstration, and did so with no serious injury to anyone.'

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