The group’s demand to ban police floats and booths from the Pride Parade and Pride community spaces appears to have emerged as its most contentious call since Sunday, but Khan said Black Lives Matter Toronto isn’t seeking a meeting with police over the matter. Demands of the BLM group include more funding to the group (see item 3 below), the hiring of BLM members to the Toronto Pride organization, and the exclusion of Toronto police, which is openly accepting of gay police offers, from future events.
Advertisement
“To be clear, we said, ‘No floats”.
“We have come so far in relations between the police and the LGBTQ community”.
Khan said her group’s actions are in keeping with “histories of resistance” that have always been a part of the tradition of Pride. “Anti-blackness needs to be addressed and they can be addressed at the same time, in the same spaces”, she said. Twenty years later it’s an integral part of what Pride is all over the world.
This year, for the first time, the festival was expanded to run for a whole month and included a tremendously diverse mix of events, discussions and gatherings – all grouped under the umbrella theme of “You Can Sit With Us”.
Earlier this week, Pride Toronto’s executive director Mathieu Chantelois said that the deal he signed on Sunday is not necessarily written in stone.
“The demands have been discussed ad nauseum by members of marginalized communities”. It is especially ironic, considering that Pride Toronto decided to make them a “honoured group” for that very reason.
To the dismay of both marchers and bystanders and despite being invited to the festivities as “honoured guests”, the Black Lives Matter protesters ground the procession to a halt for almost 30 minutes, stopping floats and staging a sit-in during which they shouted “Shut it down!”
Black Lives Matter Toronto staged a protest during the Pride parade. It is definitely bigger than me and my committee.
“Yesterday, we agreed to have a conversation about this”.
Tory said the Orlando mass shootings showed that “we’ve got things to do” to promote tolerance and inclusion for the LGBTQ community. “There wasn’t town halls that happened”.
Tory made the comment to reporters on Wednesday, one day after penning a letter to Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack thanking police for their involvement in pride this year and expressing confidence that their participation would “continue for years to come”.
“I had no idea that there were that many cops that march in this, from all different agencies”, he said, adding that he’d also had the opportunity to talk with and salute police chief Mark Saunders. “I think that is testament to why we had to create an intervention into Pride in the first place”.
What are we to make of this?
Advertisement
The list of reforms has sparked an outcry, mostly from white Pride participants who support the police float.
