Toronto Pride, quite possibly Canada’s largest annual LGBTQ event, made headlines by banning police officers from its 2017 and 2018 parades. And now, the event’s governing body is considering banning all military participation, profiteers of the “prison industrial complex” and all corporate floats (though not all corporations presence).
The governing body heard all three proposed bans, which were suggested by Pride member Lisa Amin, at a “special general meeting” earlier this week.
Reasons given for the bans included the fact that military “disproportionately target, maim, and kill racialized people … maintained by legacies of white supremacy and imperialist projects,” “queer and trans people have been criminalized and then persecuted within the prison system,” and “the parade is too long … [and] there are better ways for corporations to show us their support.”
If approved, these bans wouldn’t affect the 2019 Pride event, they’d be instated in future Pride events.
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Related: Will Toronto Pride Segregate The Parade Between True Activists And Big Corporate Sponsors?
Naturally, the proposed bans have divided opinions. One commenter found it unfair to exclude military members seeing as many identify as LGBTQ. Others worried that a ban on corporate floats might cause businesses to withdraw financial support from the expensive-to-hold event.
Some of these conversations aren’t new. In 2011, Pride Toronto considered decreasing corporate involvement to give the event more of a relevant community feel. However, the conversations around police, military and prison profiteers reflect changing social attitudes on racial justice.
Though police struggle to maintain friendly relations with the community, they also play an important role in the prison industrial complex by enforcing laws that disproportionately target poorer queers of color including sex workers, trans women and homeless youth.
Police are actually allowed to march in the parade now, just not in uniform. Officers lost the right to march in uniform in a narrow 163-to-161 vote in early 2019. Inside documents suggest that the police were invited back because community and corporate contributions to Pride decreased following the complete police ban.
Amin said she’s not trying to “shrink the party or kill the vibe” of Toronto Pride. Rather, she wants to make the parade “actually meaningful to our queer and trans communities” while giving corporations “more opportunity to get creative” by having them participate in a more impactful way.
DCguy
Frankly Pride should stop diluting itself.
It is about LGBT pride. if something isn’t having a detrimental effect on that let it in. This has been a problem with LGBT groups for a while, they all spread themselves thin, i.e. HRC marches and provides backing to multiple other groups and yet when LGBT people need those groups I don’t see them marching with us in similar numbers.
Lisa needs to take ner non-LGBT politics and save it for another day.
JaxxynTheBox
It’s about LGBT pride… So no cops or corporations need a float. I don’t know who Lisa is but I agree on keeping pride Queer and not commercialized bootlicking especially to a profession that has kicked us down so much in the past. I mean I don’t see a float of nurses in scrubs who have helped queers in the past after run in with the cops… Well the ones that survived to see a nurse. This isn’t occupational pride day.
DarkZephyr
@JaxxynTheBox
I take it you believe all military and corporate personnel are cis heterosexuals?
lcandela123
The “prison industrial complex”? What kind of goofy nonsense is that? Why is the governing body being persuaded by Lisa Amin’s silly opinions?
Aires the Ram
Icandela123, on your second question, the body was persuaded because nobody had the brass balls to stand up and call her an uneducated idiot.
Vince
I agree. Pride is about inclusion. Apparently the loony radicals are in the drivers seat in Toronto.
JaxxynTheBox
Vince, you seem to have it wrong. Pride is about Queers and their struggles. Celebration and remembrance. Not inclusion of occupations which in the past were very harmful and to this day are still harmful to a lesser extent and corporations looking to advertise. It’s not a hard concept but you seem to have missed the mark.
Aires the Ram
I say ‘let ’em keep talking’. I think they should immediately throw out all corporate sponsors, give back any and all corporate money, have no police presence what-so-ever for the parade. This way, these idiots will find out which side of the bread their butter is on. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know what would happen to a big pride parade like this with no police protection. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know what happen to the future of the parade if there were no corporate money.
Let’s just let them talk themselves right out of their parade, because that is exactly what would happen. Let them have their way and prove their “point”, whatever that may be.
Jboo
I vote Lisa Amin should be banned from pride. I happily support ALL police officers attending in uniform, as well as military.
Aires the Ram
Thank You.
iamru2
Discrimination against the police and the military by an organization whose mission is to erase discrimination! No wonder the left is in such disarray!
Vince
Dumb. Stop being such fox news partisan hack.
Aires the Ram
Exactly.
DCguy
Awww, sweetie, how adorable, you troll accounts can’t even keep on topic cant you? Please tell the RNC to hire smarter trolls
Oh and as far as being in “Disarray” you may want to look at which party added local, state, and national seats in the last election, and which party (The Republicans) lost hundreds of local, lost 7 governor’s mansions, and 40 Congressional Seats.
But please, keep on lying.
Brian
What better way to foster a sense of community and diversity and inclusion than having an ever growing list of organizations that are banned from participating? That show people that we’re serious about wanting to end discrimination.
Maybe they could compromise and just have separate entrances and water fountains for the military and police?
PinkoOfTheGange
So only the woke need to apply? That seems exclusionary, and the rational for the exclusion is counter intuitive. Why exclude the groups that you are trying to get to change their practices?
PinkoOfTheGange
rationale (my “e” key keeps misfiring)
Brian
Wait, you mean you don’t think that saying “we can exclude you but you can’t exclude us” is the best way to get bigots to come around? I’ll be darned.
andrewmpls
My local parade takes too long to get through and it’s basically one giant corporate sponsorship. It’s gotten out of hand with all the straight people wanting to be in the parade so I get it. But isn’t it nice to have them all want to kiss our ass? All those corporate sponsors obey the HRC like they’re Republicans in Congress obeying the NRA.
WindsorOntario
They want to kiss our asses because they believe the stereotype that gay men have lots of money and no kids. The second these corporations or Pride finds out you don’t have any money all those ‘we’re in this together’ and ‘everyone’s welcome here’ slogans go up in smoke.
JaxxynTheBox
Kiss our ass? Lol honestly it’s more we’re kissing theirs for the money. I mean… The heck does beer floats have to do with pride… Everything when they give pride money and put a rainbow on their float. Insert eye roll.
TheMarc
So…this will bring change by excluding the very people we need to be speaking with to bring about change?? I will never be in favor of excluding corporate sponsors. Sure, they’re mostly greedy, blood sucking monsters, but, before states and municipalities, etc. in the U.S. began implementing non-discrimination polices that included sexual orientation and gender identity (some still don’t), most major corporations adopted and publicly supporting such policies. Allied corporate support from large and even small corporations has proven valuable and their participation is valid.
As for the police, I remember the days when it was difficult to get police protection, much less active involvement and participation, for pride or gay events in general. The existence of law enforcement authorities is not the problem; people are. People are good and bad; and sometimes bad people become cops. We of all people should not traffic in broad generalizations. We know better.
This generation seems to be hell bent on ignoring basic logic and even recent history in favor of “outrage culture.” What used to be contained on Twitter has leaped into the real world and the wrong people couldn’t be happier.
JaxxynTheBox
Basic logic you say… That we should allow those who pay for advertising to show how queer accepting they are. I went to Toronto parade once. I left because all I saw were corporate floats. Were there others? I’m sure there were. But my friend came back at the end to where I was sitting and said it didn’t get any better. Now. As for cops. There’s still cops treating people of colour and queers bad. Not one in a million doing it… Why are we giving them a participation trophy for an occupation that in the past has been about beating the shit out of us. Murdering. Turn the other cheek eh? Look past the corpses of those before us because they don’t matter anymore since the police have gotten SO MUCH BETTER right? Are they gay? Are all the police gay? This isn’t an occupation parade, this isn’t a cooperation parade. It’s pride. It’s remembering those before us and celebrating who we are. Not catering to them. Do nurses who have actually helped queers over the years after the police bloodied us come in scrubs and March together with their own scrub float?
Jon in Canada
So basically:
You can be out, loud and proud of you queerness, but only while in sanctioned dress and/or ideological groupings. Any deviation from the dictated attire, attitude and/or correct thinking, will not be tolerated.
There, I think that about sums it up.
inbama
I wish I’d never heard the word “identity.”
Sammy Schlipshit
Excellent idea.
Listen closely my baby brothers/sisters.
Once upon a time in a magic city by the bay, there were proud, defiant, determined, fun lovers and political folks fighting for their lives. They worked hard, protested even harder and soared like birds set free from cages.
And, we did it without all the corporate suck-upping.
We were a peoples movement.
Well, sure glad those days are over. Aren’t we all so much better now that our entire lives are turned over to corporate greed and white/queer/gay/lavender washing is almost complete. Just a few more years, all your elders who know and lived your history will be dead. Then you whiny little bitches can spend all your time on grindr or whatever the heck you do instead of paying attention to the real world which, by the way, is still trying to eat you alive.
Pii
Toronto pride was hijacked a couple of years ago by a political movement which had very little to do with gay pride and very few actual representatives of the lgbt community. It was infiltrated and its never been the same. Meetings are “special”, closed or even un announced and often held away from the gay community. the management was hijacked as well and seems dead set on on being non inclusive and limited to very special interests that don’t reflect the community and in a lot of cases are not part of the community. People who worked very hard at establishing pride and correcting the differences with the police the community and government has been tossed aside and are no longer listened to or welcomed. Don’t let the talk kid you…they very much want the corporate sponsorship they just want it one sided. joining in the parade is restricted and costs to do so. It is my belief that those now in charge are pushing their own agenda and are probably eyeing political careers.
phillycap
I’m a little tired of the overly woke crowd. Won’t be too long where breathing wrong will be a crime to them. Pride should be all about inclusion, not exclusion. We’re adults and we can make up our own minds whether we support corporations or not. They’re sure supporting us. In fact many of the corporations are streets ahead in terms of protections and inclusions of the LGBTQ community. Their only sin for these “woke” people? They’re corporations. And police officers? You are going to exclude them because some of their colleagues are a-holes? Then we need to exclude a lot of people who are not in this profession, are gay and are total a-holes.
DarkZephyr
@JaxxynTheBox
Your compulsive support of this nonsensical attack on inclusion on nearly every comment you disagree with is annoying.
GeorgeMTL
While I understand the desire to be “inclusive” as people are mentioning, and I even agree with this a bit—in an ideal world. The fact is that every Pride I have been to is followed by negative comments about endless corporate presence and a real lack of community. We are more than just our function as consumers.
The exact comment in the article seemed to imply that there were other ways for corporations who care about the LGBTQ+ community to contribute. So let’s come up with some ways of allowing that! But we, the actual community, should control the conversation and not the corporations. If they want to cater to us, then do so in a way that doesn’t override what Pride is.
So there is no exclusion really. Anyone can contribute and anyone can participate but they must adapt to US and not the other way around. Why should a bank (that is often propped up by taxpayers while still indulging in questionable business practices, all while raking in record profits) have more visibility than underfunded organizations that are there in our communities to help support us? Let’s come to some arrangement where the big bucks can support our hurting community instead for some type of recognition as actually helping us instead of just saying “look at us, we’re cool too”.