TORONTO — It’s been nearly a year since a group of activists sat down in the middle of a downtown intersection in this city and, amid plumes of rainbow-colored smoke, brought the annual gay pride parade to a halt.
The protesters, part of the local chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM), issued a series of demands calling for greater inclusivity in Toronto’s Pride Parade, one of North America’s largest celebrations of diversity. Most controversial of the demands: a ban on police-sponsored floats and booths in the annual Pride celebration.
The activists only briefly stopped last year’s parade, but their action reverberates today. Uniformed police officers are barred from participating in this year’s parade and the city council remains a key funder of the event — moves that have triggered a debate over the meaning of inclusivity.
As Toronto prepares to stage its Pride Parade on June 25, the BLM demands and subsequent moves by City Hall, police and activists have set off accusations that are putting new attention on the relationships the city’s police, black and LGBT communities have with each other. New concerns are being raised over Toronto’s Pride celebrations, the third-largest in North America, behind only New York and San Francisco.
“If Pride Toronto fails to be inclusive, it should be dissolved and re-formed as a community-led organization,” says LGBT activist Bryn Hendricks. “I would be willing to help facilitate that.”
The tensions between police and the BLM movement are a common refrain south of the border in the U.S. But they are a relatively new occurrence in Canada, a country recognized internationally for its quality of life and promotion of human rights.
In their demands last year, Toronto’s BLM protesters called on Pride organizers to take a series of steps in addition to the police ban, including a commitment to increase diversity in staffing at Pride Toronto and a commitment to increase and support community stages at the festival, including the South Asian stage.
BLM activists did not respond to interview requests, but in a news release issued on the day of last year’s parade, the organization explained its opposition to police participation was based on the interaction between Toronto’s police force and the black community. Police officers, the group said, had singled out its members at a community fair, demanding that they produce table permits.
Other activists also voiced support last year for a ban on uniformed officers in the parade. They noted that Toronto police has a checkered past with some minority groups. In 1981, for example, more than a hundred police officers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers stormed into a handful of Toronto bathhouses, arresting some 300 men. Police Chief Mark Saunders publicly apologized last year for the 1981 arrests.
Today, random police stops based on suspicion, known as carding, is a hot-button topic in the city. Black activists say members of their community are being unfairly targeted and see carding as another name for racial profiling. In July 2013, about 27 percent of people who were carded were black, even though blacks comprise about 8.1 percent of the city’s population, according to a Toronto Star report.
Just a few weeks ago, Michael Tulloch, the first black judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal, agreed to conduct an independent review of the province’s carding regulations to determine if they are being implemented “without bias or discrimination.”
Actions taken this year by Pride Toronto organizers and city officials have only added to the confusion and angry rhetoric over the contentious issues of race, sexuality and diversity. At the time of last year’s sit-in, the then-head of Pride Toronto agreed to the BLM protesters’ nine demands, only to later say the organization wasn’t bound by the requests.
In February, Saunders, the police chief, said officers in uniform could not participate in the parade, citing a divided LGBT community in Toronto as his reason. In turn, Olivia Nuamah, Pride Toronto’s new executive director, said police officers would be welcome to participate as civilians not in uniform. She did not respond to a request for an interview.
LGBT members of the Toronto Police Service were incensed. They drafted a formal letter asking the Toronto Police Association to let city council know they would “feel completely devalued and unsupported” if the city gave Pride Toronto its annual grant.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” says Mike McCormack, the head of the organization. “There has been a lot of serious work and dedication aimed at breaking down barriers and establishing a relationship with the LGBT and other communities. Are these relationships perfect? No. Everybody acknowledges there is work to be done. But it seems that any acknowledgment of our efforts has been thrown out the window. We feel like we have been thrown under the bus.”
Added Blake Acton, a veteran police officer who is a member of Toronto’s gay community: “Police protect everyone. They respond to people who need help without first asking about their color or sexual orientation — so why should they be treated this way? You’re creating hate. It’s going back in time.”
Known as one of the most diverse cities in the world, Toronto has little racial violence compared to U.S. cities of a comparable size and the relationship between police and the black community is not nearly as fraught. This may explain why there is “a certain amount of public support for the police’s position,” McCormack’s said.
In protest of the ban on uniformed police participation, LGBT activist Hendricks placed a poster on the door of Pride’s office that read, “Not my Pride.” He has encouraged the public to sign an online petition denouncing the ban, an effort that he says has so far attracted 10,300 signatures. Hendricks also has organized the Unity First Responders Festival, an event designed to include LGBT police, firefighters, paramedics, military personnel, correctional services and even Toronto Transit Commission employees. It will run concurrently as Toronto Pride, on June 25.
“As a community, we have to create an organization that is encompassing and inclusive,” he says. “Pride is supposed to represent everyone and their decisions should reflect that. Pride cannot be a members-only club if it is going to hold a festival for the entire city.”
The city’s approval of funding the parade has drawn even more criticism. “For Toronto council to sponsor this year’s Pride Parade with a $260,000 taxpayer-funded grant would be morally indefensible,” stated an editorial in The Toronto Sun. “It would mean the city is officially condoning an organization that has specifically excluded certain city workers from participating at one of its major events.”
Added John Campbell, a city councilor who opposed funding a Pride Parade that bans uniformed police: “For Pride to toss aside its values of inclusivity and exclude a group that is important to the fabric of this city … I just don’t feel we should be granting the money under those circumstances.”
In an opinion piece for the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, gay rights activist and poet Orville Lloyd Douglas added his voice against the uniformed police ban. “I am black and gay, and I do not agree with the divisive tactics adopted by BLM Toronto, including its disruption of last year’s Pride Parade in Toronto, and its subsequent demand that uniformed officers not participate in the event.” He added that, “No one [had] appointed Black Lives Matter to act as spokesperson for the entire black community.”
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Toronto Pride Parade Approaches Amid Anger Over Uniformed Police Ban originally appeared on usnews.com
