Oct 02, 2007Quickie Link: Russian Gay Rights Activist To Speak In Chicago
By vanrozenheim
(USA) - A Russian activist who has organized pride parades in Moscow in defiance of city bans will speak this weekend at a Gay rights march this weekend. The ninth annual Matthew Shepard March is scheduled for Saturday at Halsted and Roscoe streets. Nikolai Alexeyev is scheduled to be the keynote speaker. Alexeyev has organized several Gay pride parades in Moscow, facing violent protests and getting arrested for defying a ban on such events by Moscow's mayor. At a Gay pride parade in Moscow last May, police detained Gay rights activists, among them European lawmakers, as they tried to present a letter to Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov in a demonstration that also attracted a hostile crowd of people who punched and threw eggs at the activists.
