About 180 LGBTQ groups and musical floats took part in the downtown parade — more than ever before, German news agency dpa reported. Organizers said around 1.2 million visitors attended the celebrations, while police put the crowd at around 1 million. With the parade, Cologne is sending “a strong message about diversity, tolerance, against hatred and exclusion,” said Hedrick West, the first governor from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne is based, to attend. in the city parade. in its roughly 30-year history, dpa reported. Cologne has one of the largest LGBTQ communities in the country. “All over the world, unfortunately also in Germany, there are extremists at work who don’t want to give us our freedom,” said Sven Lehmann, the German government’s commissioner for acceptance of sexual and gender diversity. “The strong message from Cologne is: We will never let them take away this freedom.”
