Pride The Hague, memory, survival and what LGBTQI+ communities teach us about resilience
Pride The Hague: Saturday morning, as we prepared to join friends and participate in the Pride Walk, I pinned the old resistance rainbow flag to my sweater.
Almost immediately, I wondered if I should still be wearing it at all.
My hesitation was whether it was still appropriate, given the evolution and inclusiveness of the newer LGBTQI+ flag. I worried it might offend someone. And I did not want to cover myself in multiple pins. Not one to dress up for the occasion, I simply wanted to show up, be present, and pay homage in a small way.
Discussing it with my partner, true to his matter of fact style, he was quick to point out:
“Well, you are old. It wasn’t inclusive when you were fighting for the rights people have today.”
Having chosen not to take offence to the cheeky, yet kind of true, “you are old” comment, he quickly got me questioning something deeper.
How do communities honour history while continuing to evolve?
I found something deeply emotional in this. While I was wondering if an old symbol was still acceptable, I was simultaneously remembering when wearing any symbol at all once carried risk.
The badge, for me, represents less the pride of being who I am today, and more the fight for visibility. The danger faced. The courage to show up. The pain of survival. The search for solidarity. The attempt to form an identity in a world that often wanted us hidden.
And equally, the realisation that this question does not feel like just a Pride one anymore.
It feels like a societal one.
What survival made possible
This past week saw the opening of the Dutch Pride season 2026 splash colour and culture across our city with Pride The Hague. The city of international peace and justice, still carrying both ideals and contradictions.
For the past three years, a new, younger generation has been successfully organising the event, creating their own unique, cohesive, diverse and inclusive week of activities. Unlike anything the city had previously experienced.
The Season opened without rage or emergency, but with visibility, connection, equality, solidarity, stories and community.
For all the relief it brings each year to be part of a celebration, not a fight, I could not help but notice that under the banner of love, small placards still warned about rising hostility toward trans communities.
Pride each year, and maybe more so now with age, makes my mind pause for reflection. Pride has always made me emotional in ways I struggle to explain.
This year was no different.
Pride The Hague: Not a march, but a walk
As we set off for the walk, it was led by a huge rainbow flag held proudly from its sides by many within the community. Followed closely by a large display of balloons spelling out the word love.
A friend of ours kept commenting on how sweet the event was.
So many people filled the streets as we walked the route around the city centre. The friendliness, the joy and the calm. There were no signs of commercialisation. Nor loud music blasting or performance.
Just solidarity and laughter. Friendship across the many communities gathered beneath the same rainbow umbrella.
One thing I keep noticing about the Prides of the last decade is how the emotional atmosphere changes when a community moves from fighting for survival toward fighting for visibility, inclusion and belonging.
Appropriately, it was not framed as a march, but as a walk.
And that is exactly what it felt like.
There were very few banners or placards. However scattered among the few spoke of unity, solidarity and visibility with a noticeable focus on trans rights. It reminded me that danger has not disappeared. The work of protecting human dignity never fully disappears. It moves and changes language as it finds new targets.
Rising authoritarianism, fear politics and scapegoating now see the trans community facing challenges the broader LGBTQI+ community has not faced with this intensity for some decades here in the Netherlands and other western countries.
These attacks on minority communities, and the rise in anti trans rhetoric, are doing their work. They are creating social fragmentation.
Younger generations face so many challenges in an uncertain, unjust future. But I sometimes think many younger people are able to experience Pride first as celebration, and honestly, that is part of what earlier generations were fighting for.
And it was comforting to realise that as new challenges emerge, the community now carries stronger networks of solidarity and support than ever before.
We were fighting to live
I guess this is why Pride brings back things of emotions each year for me: as a teenager in the late eighties and early nineties, the AIDS crisis was a real and terrifying presence.
I lost the first person I knew when I was just sixteen or seventeen.
At the time, even grief felt dangerous.
It was a secret I buried from everyone and lived with for decades out of fear of association. AIDS was framed as a gay disease. This lead to me later protesting for research, government funding and public health responses. Also volunteering for trusts and foundations.
There was also violence and murder, including by those meant to protect us.
We continued the fight for decriminalisation. In one state of Australia, homosexuality could still carry imprisonment of up to twenty one years, among the harshest penalties in the world.
We fought for equal opportunities. For housing. For care. To end fear. To end silence. For community organising.
Many of us lived quietly and cautiously. Visibility could carry consequences. Violence was real. Support networks were limited. Public solidarity was nowhere near what it is today.
We were not marching for branding or visibility alone.
We were fighting for our lives.
For survival.
And of course, neither is wrong. Marching born from urgency, or walking born from visibility and solidarity. But they carry very different emotional energies.
The marches and protests I remember carried grief, anger, urgency, fear, survival and political necessity.
Now Pride events can also carry celebration, affirmation, belonging, joy and much more.
In no means I say this as a loss.
After all, that is part of what survival was hoping for.
What we built for each other
As I write this, I am thinking about what the LGBTQI+ community can teach us about resilience.
The thing that struck me most during this year’s Pride The Hague was not simply the celebration itself, but the reminder that communities do not become resilient by accident.
They become resilient because people are forced to learn how to care for one another when institutions, politics, media, families or society fail to do so.
Long before words like “social cohesion” became political talking points, LGBTQI+ communities were already building chosen families, mutual support networks, safe spaces, health responses, solidarity and systems of care out of necessity.
Of course, not perfectly. And frankly, not without division or pain.
But there was a deep understanding that survival was never going to be individual.
Pride reminded me again that peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the presence of relationships strong enough to hold people together when the world tries to pull them apart. Something I reflected on further in Building a Culture of Peace.
I am thinking that perhaps this is what this moment asks of all of us. And I do not mean only those of us under the rainbow umbrella.
We are living through a period of deliberate social fragmentation. Of scapegoating. Of institutions failing people in ways that feel new, but are not.
And there are communities who have already lived through that.
Communities who built care systems from scratch because they had no other choice.
Communities who carry knowledge that the rest of society is only beginning to need.
The trans placards I saw during the walk were not a disruption to the celebration. They were a reminder that the work continues, and that the community already knows how to do it.
And I realised something important myself: Resilience is not inherited.
It is practised, passed on, and built again each time a new group finds itself pushed to the edge.
We are so distracted and consumed by the here and now that it is not always easy to look back, or even see what we have.
I recently heard younger people argue that history has little to teach them because history is responsible for so much of the injustice they inherited.
And honestly, I understand the feeling.
In a world that often feels rigged, trust becomes difficult.
As a community builder, I feel we are challenged with highlighting the living, breathing, successful examples that might help rebuild that lost trust.
Not as nostalgia or given as a lecture. Just proof that people have survived impossible atmospheres before, by finding each other.
I wore my pin
This new generation of Pride The Hague felt youthful. It was youthful, current and confident. It carried principles, self awareness and integrity. But what mattered to me, was it showed a community still evolving, still questioning itself, still recognising its own flaws, and still trying to build spaces of belonging and solidarity in an increasingly fragmented world.
And perhaps that is the quiet proof that something worked. Not that it is perfect nor completely worked out, but it is enough.
Enough that a younger generation can arrive at Pride The Hague and experience belonging before they experience the fight.
I don’t say this as naivety.
It is what earlier generations were marching toward without ever being sure they would reach it.
I'm actually wondering if that is what Pride still teaches us.
Not only how to resist, but how to remember.
Not only how to survive, but how to keep building community.
As the walk circled back to the park, the stage was alive with music, dancing and a closing celebration.
I wore my pin.
Not as a correction to this version of Pride The Hague or Pride in general.
I wore my pin simply as another layer of the same story.
Some carry it forward.
Some carry it back.
And I believe that in that sweet spot, that overlap, is what community really means.
FAQ's
What is Pride The Hague?
Pride The Hague is an annual LGBTQI+ celebration held in The Hague, Netherlands. The event includes community gatherings, visibility campaigns, cultural activities and the Pride Walk through the city.
Why is Pride important for LGBTQI+ communities?
Pride began as a protest movement fighting discrimination, violence and criminalisation against LGBTQI+ people. Today Pride also represents visibility, solidarity, belonging, community and celebration.
What does the rainbow flag represent?
The rainbow flag has historically symbolised LGBTQI+ visibility, diversity and resistance. Over time, newer Pride flags have evolved to reflect broader inclusiveness across the LGBTQI+ community.
Why does this article discuss the AIDS crisis?
The AIDS crisis deeply shaped generations of LGBTQI+ people during the 1980s and 1990s. It influenced activism, community organising, public health responses and the creation of support networks that continue to shape LGBTQI+ resilience today.
What can society learn from LGBTQI+ communities about resilience?
LGBTQI+ communities have long built chosen families, mutual support systems and spaces of solidarity in response to exclusion and discrimination. These experiences offer important lessons about community care, social cohesion and resilience in uncertain times.
Why are trans rights mentioned in this reflection?
The article reflects on how hostility and scapegoating often shift toward different minority groups over time. During Pride The Hague, placards supporting trans rights highlighted that the work of protecting human dignity and inclusion continues.
This article was written by Gregg Hone. The words, structure, reflections, experiences and opinions expressed are deeply personal. AI was used to assist with two transitional passages (subsequently rewritten by the author), to generate the FAQ section, and for technical SEO page construction.
Gregg Hone
Gregg Hone aka Gregg the Artivist is a climate storyteller, artist, and activist using the power of creativity to challenge systems of injustice and inspire meaningful change. Working at the intersection of climate and social justice, Gregg creates content that is bold, accessible, emotionally resonant — and deeply human.
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Thank you for sharing your personal experiences here Gregg – it was very cheering to read about joy, community and connection in the pride walk. Your honesty is so welcome
Thank you Wendy. That really means a lot. I was honestly a little nervous sharing parts of this piece, so I’m grateful the feeling of joy, connection and community still came through alongside the heavier reflections.🤗