Crazy Dream by moon

when i first came to beograd it was a shock, my western activist politics were turned upside down, so many of the basic conditions i took for granted just didn't exist. Id come here to work on organising the Peoples Global Action conference with the local collective, i didnt realise that social space where dialogue and difference can be expressed is still being fought for at a basic level.

While in belgrade the level of homophobia started to get to me,id come from living in a very gay suburb in sydney for the past 5 years, there the fight is against the commodification of our existence. i never imagined the threat of physical violence on a day to day basis because of my sexuality.

in beograd the 2004 pride was cancelled, the day before it was supposed to happen the streets were full of homophobic posters put up by fascists, the slogan 'prevention is better than the cure'......im not sure what the cure might be but i never want to find out.

During the PGA conference, due to interactions with the local boys in the neighborhood the atmosphere of homophobia became oppressive, at the same time it seemed invisible or unimportant to those who were not queer. by the time the conference finished i was so angry that i was determined to come back to beograd and make something really queer happen here.

over the course of a few months and a lot of emails we talked about what we could do, people from Beograd came to London came for the beyond ESF conference hosted by the wombles, there in the first 'Queers Without Borders' meeting Imad talked about an indoor pride held recently in lebanon..... this was the spark... from here we began to think that something was possible.

the local group in beograd began to meet and plan, i was in london and the email list was mostly in serbian, a couple of meetings in ljubliana was the closest i got to trying understand how it was all going. scrabbling for funds, finding the london queeruption money sent to support the last pride. and then coming here to work three weeks before the festival was due to start.... it began as a crazy dream.... something we didn't really think was possible but we did it!!!!