Edmonton Pride parade held hostage

[opinterph]

And apparently they share America's strained relationship between police and brown people or else what were they protesting?

That's where a little research can prove beneficial. What are the complaints in Canada relative to the police and the LGBTQ2S+ community?

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

That's where a little research can prove beneficial. What are the complaints in Canada relative to the police and the LGBTQ2S+ community?

I know several members have expressed that although Canada is miles ahead of the US in race relations, it's not without its racism which, common sense tells me, is going to bleed into policing in some capacity. As for this topic, perhaps a Canadian could get over their anger at Pride being interrupted and try looking at this from black LGBT perspective and explain what exactly they're upset about, surely they didn't just wake up and say "Let's ruin pride for the fuck-all of it."

That'll be a good direction to take because calling the protesters terrorists was sort of self-defeating [and racist].

 

[TickTockMan]

I was curious to know if the QTIBPOC shares fabulouslyghetto’s call for an escalation toward violence as a means to prevent the police from participating in pride, assuming peaceful protest does not bring about the desired result.

Speaking for myself only; I don’t believe that is what Fab said or meant, but to answer the question, I do. But we have had so many leaps forward I feel it is the wrong tactic.

Yes there is a lot more that needs to be done. Yes it is going too slow, but it is going in the right direction for the most part. Things come in waves. Right now in time we are going thru a conservative wave. Even so called liberals are the farthest to the right than they really have ever been in many ways. When the time of Trump is over things will start getting better. Most of that will just be that we don't hear about the beatings and killing as much, but some of it will be judicial rulings to make life better for us and change of attitudes.

I don't agree police officers or members of the armed forces should not be included. I do however feel that these protesters have a point and until more action is taken to protect all minorities being killed and beat for no reason that the police bureaus and the branches of the arm forces sit out our events, while welcoming active LGBT/other minorities to the events in their uniforms if they so choose.

I have said it a few times before, but I will say it again. The biggest mistake that is happening here, in my opinion, is making it about a certain group or groups. The way gaining allies will happen will be to make it about those you want to get, so make it about them. Make it about us. Tell them why it is bad for them. Tell them why it is bad for their close friends and family.

My biggest problem with groups protesting like this is they treat everyone not a 100% in line with their thoughts as an enemy. Case in point in the 2016 election who did they go after first. Bernie Sanders. Bernie was probably the most supportive to their cause out of all candidates, democrat or republican. Why go after an ally. They didn’t lose Bernie as an ally, but many of his supporter cared just a little bit less about their cause when the day was done.

Many non-supporters mocked Black Lives Matters with All Lives Matter. I feel BLM should have co-opted that and went with it for three main reasons: 1) They never said they didn’t, they just said black lives matter as well. 2) It would have forced the mockers to either put up or shut up. 3) When the majority didn’t put up they could call them out on it.

When Philando Castile was shot and killed why was so very little said about The NRA saying nothing to support his right to have a gun? Why were protest rallies, marches, billboards, etc. not in as many places as could be to point out The NRA’s hypocrisy? It would have pointed out that other law abiding citizens could be killed on a whim. That could have got gun owners whether of color or another minority on board while still making their point, that for some you can do everything right and it still does not matter.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Speaking for myself only; I don’t believe that is what Fab said or meant, but to answer the question, I do. But we have had so many leaps forward I feel it is the wrong tactic.

Yes there is a lot more that needs to be done. Yes it is going too slow, but it is going in the right direction for the most part. Things come in waves. Right now in time we are going thru a conservative wave. Even so called liberals are the farthest to the right than they really have ever been in many ways. When the time of Trump is over things will start getting better. Most of that will just be that we don't hear about the beatings and killing as much, but some of it will be judicial rulings to make life better for us and change of attitudes.

I don't agree police officers or members of the armed forces should not be included. I do however feel that these protesters have a point and until more action is taken to protect all minorities being killed and beat for no reason that the police bureaus and the branches of the arm forces sit out our events, while welcoming active LGBT/other minorities to the events in their uniforms if they so choose.

I have said it a few times before, but I will say it again. The biggest mistake that is happening here, in my opinion, is making it about a certain group or groups. The way gaining allies will happen will be to make it about those you want to get, so make it about them. Make it about us. Tell them why it is bad for them. Tell them why it is bad for their close friends and family.

My biggest problem with groups protesting like this is they treat everyone not a 100% in line with their thoughts as an enemy. Case in point in the 2016 election who did they go after first. Bernie Sanders. Bernie was probably the most supportive to their cause out of all candidates, democrat or republican. Why go after an ally. They didn’t lose Bernie as an ally, but many of his supporter cared just a little bit less about their cause when the day was done.

Many non-supporters mocked Black Lives Matters with All Lives Matter. I feel BLM should have co-opted that and went with it for three main reasons: 1) They never said they didn’t, they just said black lives matter as well. 2) It would have forced the mockers to either put up or shut up. 3) When the majority didn’t put up they could call them out on it.

When Philando Castile was shot and killed why was so very little said about The NRA saying nothing to support his right to have a gun? Why were protest rallies, marches, billboards, etc. not in as many places as could be to point out The NRA’s hypocrisy? It would have pointed out that other law abiding citizens could be killed on a whim. That could have got gun owners whether of color or another minority on board while still making their point, that for some you can do everything right and it still does not matter.

Once again you prove why you leaving JUB will be a major loss, ever sensible and willing to look outside of your own perspective to see the bigger picture.

 

[bankside]

Maybe I missed something but what human rights do white people have that black people don't?

White people and black people have exactly the same rights, which is why they are called human rights. But how many times you get an idiot standing in the way of someone’s rights is different for white people and black people. It is more likely to happen to a black person. Now the thing is these are human rights, not “black rights.” So when someone gets in the way of human rights, we are all, as humans, supposed to stand up and do something about it. It’s not good enough to say oh well, black problem, so black people have to go deal with it and they have to go complain about it. If someone attacks anyone’s equal human rights, it’s a problem for all of us to fix. Get it now?

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

White people and black people have exactly the same rights, which is why they are called human rights. But how many times you get an idiot standing in the way of someone’s rights is different for white people and black people. It is more likely to happen to a black person. Now the thing is these are human rights, not “black rights.” So when someone gets in the way of human rights, we are all, as humans, supposed to stand up and do something about it. It’s not good enough to say oh well, black problem, so black people have to go deal with it and they have to go complain about it. If someone attacks anyone’s equal human rights, it’s a problem for all of us to fix. Get it now?

standing o-motherfucking-vation, Mikey never misses an opportunity to express that problems that affect people of color aren't his concern, typical of the pseudo-religious crowd.

 

[bankside]

Jeez Fab you cry like it was America who invented the slave trade. Here's another lesson for ya..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

How does “who invented the slave trade?” have anything to do with the responsibility to halt it and clean up the wounds left in its wake?

 

[bankside]

Earlier this year, the Edmonton Festival Pride Society denied permission for the United Conservative Party to participate in the 2018 pride parade. The UCP is the Official Opposition.

One aspect of the denial of the UCP’s request to participate was that individual members were not prevented from attending the festival and participating; however, there could be no sanctioned participation of the group as an entity.

I am wondering if the same decision process that has now excluded police participation in future pride parades allows individual police officers to attend and participate. After all, I assume some members of the police are also members of the LGBTQ2S+ community.

Edmonton Pride Festival Society denies United Conservative Party’s application to march in the 2018 pride parade (The Star Edmonton; May 3, 2018)

The leader of the Cons is Jason Kenney. He is a staunch catholic who can’t seem to tell the difference between his church and his country. But that’s not why he was banned, we actually had a lay catholic group at Pride. The problem is that on his first day as a member of the new national conservative government and as a leading public figure of the party, he voted to reverse marriage equality, as decided by the previous government under its authority as confirmed by the Supreme Court. In the single most momentous settled victory affecting gay and lesbian equality of the last 50 years, he voted to erase our equality while shouting that gays were already free to marry in any heterosexual union of their choice.

The Trudeau government, which replaced his as he went scuttling back to Alberta to try his hand at provincial politics, famously apologised for this and a whole bunch of other shit they also didn’t actually do over the years, while Kenney, who was part of it, just took his lumps when he lost the vote and hoped the whole thing would go away and that everyone would just drop it. No, you can’t make the dumbest most unprincipled vote possible about gay equality and then carry on to walk in the gay parade. I can tell you if he owned up to it, said “that was a mistake, it was wrong to have voted against your equal human rights, and since then even any concerns about religious freedom never amounted to anything, so I’m sorry about the whole thing” then he too would have had his group in that parade instead of in some sad pancake breakfast at the Mckernan elementary school gymnasium. Oh and it might have helped if he explained why schools should be forced to out kids to their parents when the school knows the kid is gay but the kid says he knows his parents are homophobes. Yeah that might help if he could explain his current provincial policy goals as well.

So the UCP excludes itself from the parade on account of them just having a fundamentally unaddressed hostile track record of its leader, and currently hostile policy prescriptions in its platform for provincial governance. It’s no more incongruous to ban them than to ban some quack promoting his “conversion therapy “ program.

Police and military literally have gay liaison offers, non-discrimination policies, recruiting drives. The have a whole bunch of commitments which have vividly changed the quality of service from police or the quality of forces membership for military personnel. I am personally connected with a trans individual who works for the Royal Canadian Air Force and with the full support of the brass, she is the departmental contact in the government-wide pride network. So no you don’t stop in the middle of the street for a tantrum where you throw your toys out of the crib. The so-called oppressive institutions in reality have extensive outreach and inclusion efforts, and they take the time to discuss issues with specific members or specific incidents that don’t live up to solidly proclaimed and very reasonable values of service and equality.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

As some one born in new York I would like to point out that the reaso any where on earth has gay pride marches started at the Stone wall bar . Half of the gay clients where Trannies. The Police for years walked in arrresting for no reason and beating teh hell out of them . In 1969 when the police came in the patrons beat the shit out of them and thats why you all have any parades or rights so I am with people who do not want Military or Police if they are no for Gay Rghts PERIOD

Bullshit. There were gay rights marches in European countries decades before Stonewall.

It is a cliché that Americans don't know the first thing about world history (and world geography), but it is confirmed all too often.

 

[rareboy]

^ Do you have some info on this? I would be very interested in learning more about this history in Europe.

 

[opinterph]

I do however feel that these protesters have a point and until more action is taken to protect all minorities being killed and beat for no reason that the police bureaus and the branches of the arm forces sit out our events

To what extent are these beatings and killings being perpetrated by Canadian police?

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

To what extent are these beatings and killings being perpetrated by Canadian police?

While we wait for a Canadian to chime in, a cursory google search reveals that it has happened in recent years and there is concern that it's underreported, and whatever the numbers are, one is too many, maybe they're being proactive before this gets out of hand instead of the American policy of waiting until there's a mountain of bodies piled up to say something. The most recent incident I found was in twinny sixteen.

 

[mikey3000]

Here are a couple links relevant to this discussion that I found useful:

Milestones In The History of Pride Across Canada (Queer Events; London, ON)

'Two-spirit is a different conversation' (The Globe and Mail; Toronto, ON; September 12, 2017) – Relates to Calgary’s 2017 Pride​

I have a very close connection to the 1985 murder in High Park. Those were my friends that did it and that was my high school. It was all so shocking and a very confusing time.

 

[bankside]

To what extent are these beatings and killings being perpetrated by Canadian police?

I don’t think this list is comprehensive or uniformly well-sourced but here is a list of police killings in Canada.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_Canada

Often, especially watching American news over the past few years, I have wondered if we should solve this problem the other way around:when should police kill people?

 

[mikey3000]

I think police should only kill when a life is pereived to be in immediate and imminent danger. Period..

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

I think police should only kill when a life is pereived to be in immediate and imminent danger. Period..

That's subjective and leaving it to their judgment hasn't been working so well thus far for minorities. Black people have been shot while disarmed, unarmed, back turned, running away, meanwhile white boys walk out of a school with an ar15 having just slaughtered people and the cops don't feel any immediate or imminent danger. Go figure.

 

[mcbrion]

Pride parades were once demonstrations to demand acceptance into society. Odd to see one used to demand society's exclusion.

Pride Parades were not about "demanding acceptance." They were celebrations of pride, a completely different concept.

The first Pride parades were held in neighborhoods that were mainly gay (in San Francisco, it started on Polk St., but then the Castro became "Gay Central" by 1976), so that the gay community could participate in our own celebration. (House party, anyone?!?) We were not asking for the straight world's acceptance. That actually happened later, when we boycotted companies that openly called homosexuals deviants of some sort - such as Coors beer once did (among others). Once we boycotted - and saw the power of the "gay dollar" - they "saw the light," (and saw their sales drop) and suddenly became "enlightened. THEY came courting US. WE did NOT court THEM. And since these corporate giants courted us, they had no choice but to to affirm their "support" of gays, and develop corporate policies of non-discrimination. It was all very interesting to watch.
The San Francisco Gay Pride Parade - for many, many years, originated in the Castro, went down Market Street and then to Civic Center (near City Hall). It was only AFTER corporate sponsors wanted to participate ( the late 80s or early 90s - I forget which) that it moved down to the Ferry Building in San Francisco - at the waterfront, and then the parade route extended twice as far (to the Civic Center) - and became 5x as big, until it became San Francisco's largest parade. (That took a while, maybe 7-10 years.)
But it was never about demanding acceptance. When you're already proud of who you are, you don't NEED to demand acceptance. You just ARE.
Now, Stonewall was about demanding acceptance, for sure! But not the Pride Parades. That's why the first word after Gay is "Pride." In San Francisco, nobody needed to demand anything: we are a quite powerful force in city politics and have been since 1975. By the time AIDS kicked in, other than individual stories of discrimination, we were a highly mobilized force to be reckoned with.
Besides, we were too "pretty" to have to need to "demand" acceptance in SF. And as society overall values "beauty," we had already had that packaged in 24-karat Gold (not gold plated).

 

[mcbrion]

Ironic, though, that the Toronto Pride Committee apologized for their "anti-blackness." That's pretty enlightened to acknowledge that one hasn't treated all the minorities in one's midst with equal respect. I don't remember San Francisco Pride ever acknowledging how racist the gay community was for so many years. That's one of the reasons Marlon Riggs felt the need for the documentary "Tongues Untied" (Black Men Loving Other Black Men). There was as much discrimination WITHIN the SF gay community as there was hatred from the outside US population. It wasn't even until 1984 that there was one single Black bartender working in gay establishments in the Castro (other than as djs). And that hiring was forced by me, since my lover was the manager of the most popular of the Castro bars, The Badlands. No Black waiters, no Black bartenders, no Black...anything! And the same of the Asian community, which was equally invisible until well into the 90s. To be fair to my lover, he wasn't used to having to think of making breakthroughs in racial equality. I helped him see things differently. But Danny Lord was STILL the only Black bartender in the Castro through 2002, if my memory serves me correctly. I left SF after that.

Funny how we forget Walter Kelly's saying, "We have met the enemy...and he is US!" (And THIS in the War of 1812, even!) Always a problem, isn't it? Forgetting history. OUR history.

But hey: it took Australia until 2008 to apologize to the Aborigines, so...

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Ironic, though, that the Toronto Pride Committee apologized for their "anti-blackness." That's pretty enlightened to acknowledge that one hasn't treated all the minorities in one's midst with equal respect. I don't remember San Francisco Pride ever acknowledging how racist the gay community was for so many years. That's one of the reasons Marlon Riggs felt the need for the documentary "Tongues Untied" (Black Men Loving Other Black Men). There was as much discrimination WITHIN the SF gay community as there was hatred from the outside US population. It wasn't even until 1984 that there were any Blacks working in gay establishments in the Castro (other than as djs). No Black waiters, no Black bartenders, no Black...anything! And the same of the Asian community, which was equally invisible until well into the 90s.

Funny how we forget Walter Kelly's saying, "We have met the enemy...and he is US!" (And THIS in the War of 1812, even!) Always a problem, isn't it? Forgetting history. OUR history.

Racism in the gay community [expressed consistently here on JUB as well] is a demon few are willing to confront, there are racist members here who for the most part express their bigotry unchallenged by their buddies and even the mods sometimes. The prevailing school of thought seems to be it's not racism if you're not wearing a white hood and burning a cross on a black family's lawn.

 

[mcbrion]

FG, People always rationalize their racism. There's always something that the minority did do/didn't do/could have done/should have done - or NOT done, so that "they wouldn't be where they are today". Or even better: "They wouldn't be in this predicament." i always loved that logic.

It's human nature to deflect anything that makes one feel guilt, shame or embarrassment. After all, when we were kids, how many of us didn't say - when mom turned an angry eye at one of her children breaking her favorite vase - "It was Billy's fault. He chased me and was going to hit me, so I reached out and pushed your vase into his head....but it wasn't MY fault. It was Billy's fault for chasing me." Once you do the little things that come so naturally, they become ingrained into your nature and you displace any responsibility for ignorance or bad behavior onto someone else. Then you can rationalize the REALLY BIG THINGS. That's what George Wallace did when he was governor of Alabama in the 50s and refused to allow a single Black child into "his" schools. (Ah, but he repented by the '70s and actually apologized. Still, he was the exception to the rule. But, at the time, for him to apologize in front of Black congregations - in Churches!! - that was really astounding! WHAT AN EXCEPTION!!)
Well, as Flip Wilson used to say when he was in drag playing Geraldine, "The Devil Made Me Do It!!!!"