No task today

I know — Sundays are task days. But today I want to take a moment for something personal instead.

As some of you know, I'm German. On Saturday night, a car was driven into the crowd at the end of Berlin Pride. A woman was killed. At least sixteen people were injured, several of them critically. The parade was cut short and the crowd was sent home.

This breaks my heart. Berlin isn't just any city — for gay men in Europe it is the city, the one that has meant safety and possibility for a hundred years. And it was us who were attacked. Again.

So there's no task today. Not as a German gay man. Business as usual wouldn't feel right today.

Attacks like this are meant to make us quiet and invisible again. Hannah Arendt once said that if one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew — not as a German, not as a citizen of the world. I've thought about that sentence all night. We were attacked as queer people. So we must defend ourselves as queer people — and I can only do that the way I know how.

Which is why everything else goes ahead exactly as planned, starting tomorrow. Not because nothing happened. Because staying explicit about what we want is the only answer I have.

But today, I want to stay silent. I hope you understand.

Take care of each.

All the best to you. ♥️

A.