Now starting to pick up views on YouTube following a powerful facedown of homophobic violence by London’s LGBT+ community on 26 August, We Will Not Live In Fear, a music promo style video of the Queer night Pride protest is relevant to us all, everywhere and anywhere in the world.
August 23rd 2023 – not 1983 – two gay men were knifed outside the Two Brewers, an LGBTQ venue in Clapham, London.
Holly Johnson, Jimmy Somerville, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, LGBT+ History Month, Naz And Matt Foundation, QX Magazine, DIVA Magazine, Two Brewers London, Arch among a growing number of organisations, London LGBT+ venues and celebrities who have now put their public support behind it and are now sharing it forward on their social channels.
Watch it here:
World-famous recording artist and music legend Holly Johnson gave it his support, urging, ‘I wish there was no need for this demonstration. Shocking hate crimes recently South of the Thames. It can happen anywhere. Speak out!’ Iconic singer Jimmy Somerville shares it forward saying, ‘Never live in fear!’
In the shadow of a growing wave of homophobic violence in London, and in direct response to four brutal assaults within the space of just six days in London, the LGBT+ community put their own faces and voices out there in full visibility, in the very neighbourhood where two gay men had recently been viciously knifed right outside much-loved LGBT+ venue The Two Brewers. As we write, the assailants remain unapprehended and at large.
Organised as collective action by groups like Queer Night Pride and ActUP, the visibly defiant protest march went back to the same streets where the attacks had taken place and sought to highlight a worrying rise in brutal hate crimes.
Among marchers and speakers were legendary LGBT+ and human rights activist Peter Tatchell, politician Zach Polanski and UK Pride activists for some 50 years now Julian Hows and Peter Scott-Presland. Julian Hows, just 16 on his first demo back in 1972 asked marchers, ‘Why do we continually have to take this ***t? Time and time again it surfaces. Whenever it happens, call it out! People say we have freedoms. We don’t have freedoms unless we ****ing take them!‘.
Founder of the Muslim LGBT network Edel Khan, is himself a survivor of vicious homophobic assaults. He spoke with a burning passion, offering to show the marchers his own physical scars, ’25 years, I’ve been doing this…I tell you, I’ve been attacked, you can see my neck, you can see my hand, you can see my stomach. I was left for ****ing dead and nobody did nothing about it! I lived to tell the tale!’
A spokesperson for the Queer Night Pride collective said, ‘NIGHT PRIDE is a protest, not a demand for equality. Not a demand for better policing. Not a demand for mere tolerance and acceptance. We are revolting, and we will have true liberation! We will hold hands, share affection, kiss our friends and lovers wherever we want. We won’t be confined to the safety of our homes, clubs and community spaces. We will express our gender identity in any way we damn please. We will not hide the many ways in which we express our sexuality/ies. We are unapologetic and unashamed. We are authentic and real. We are many and we will no longer be attacked. Fight back!‘
We Will Not Live In Fear, the march, the faces in it refusing to be bowed, have the simplest message for viewers wherever you are in the world: homophobic violence ends now. It’s not a negotiation. Watch it and share it forward.”
