I participated in the sit-down protest last July. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov) A new direction in contemporary politicsĪlexandria Williams, of Black Lives Matter Toronto, speaks at a news conference to discuss the Pride Parade controversy in Toronto on Thursday July 7, 2016. It is with these issues in mind that BLM-TO engaged in the direct action of July 2016 that resulted in a ban on police marching in uniforms in the Pride parade.
These constituencies have made clear to the queer communities of which they are a part that police and policing represents a clear and present danger for them and that police participation in parades contravenes their full participation as queer community members. Within these groups, there is no debate about ongoing police discrimination and brutality.
These are also the people that modern policing most often subject to its brutal mechanisms of control, arrest and incarceration. They work together with queers, trans people and sex workers, people with mental health issues, poor people and people who are marginalized in a white capitalist heteropatriarchal society. The organization understands the importance of intersectionality as the philosophical and practical foundation of its organizing. These activists have long worked against policing abuses and other state interventions into their lives they refuse to concede to business as usual. The mainstream queer community has been brutal in its insistence that police marching in the parade represents progress and change that should be welcomed by all queers.īLM-TO and other activist groups from Boston to Washington to Winnipeg to Vancouver offer a different perspective. The debate has been vicious: racist, transphobic and anti-sex worker. Just this week, the New York City chapter of BLM stated their full solidarity with the Toronto chapter and called for the removal of uniformed police from the NYC Pride Parade.
As a result of their work, Pride marches across Canada and the United States are being forced to have difficult conversations about how police participation represents a fundamental political contradiction. Those in the second group are still collectively fighting for fully accorded rights to be their full queer selves to them, the police still represent a clear and present danger.īLM-TO has emerged as the leading activist voice on anti-Black policing in North America. On the one side, many are white male queers, and on the other side many are Black, Indigenous and bisexual people of colour (BIPOC), including poor queers, sex workers and people with disabilities. The war rages between those who believe all gay rights are now secure and those who understand that rights are parsed out according to privileged identities. But since then, Toronto’s queer community has been in a raging civil war. All of BLM-TO demands were agreed to and later endorsed by Pride’s membership and board. Among them was a ban on police forces marching in uniform or full regalia and carrying guns at the parade. BLM-TO made a number of demands of Pride Toronto in order for the parade to get moving again.
Last July, Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO) held up the Toronto Pride Parade for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes to plunge Toronto’s queer community into a Queer Civil War.