Members of the Black Lives Matter Toronto group briefly halted the Pride parade today, holding up the marching for about 30 minutes.
The parade didn't re-start until after Pride Toronto executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed a document agreeing to the group's demands.
The organization was given the status of Honoured Group for the parade, which is the grand finale of Pride Month. It did not give Pride Toronto advance notice of their planned sit-in.
Alexandra Williams, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, told CBC's Natasha Fatah that they held the sit-in because they wanted to hold Pride Toronto accountable for what she called "anti-blackness."
[...]
The group released a list of demands, including a commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staff, and to prioritize the hiring of black transgender women and indigenous people.
Some of the other demands Chantelois agreed to are that the parade will no longer have police floats, and the organization will hold a public town hall with groups such as Black Lives Matter Toronto within six months.
32 comments
Fundie fights are only fun when its the other side having them!
Just goes to show that in any group of humans, no matter how noble their aims and aspirations, there will always be a certain proportion of arseholes.
Meh.. BLM has become full of egocentric racists. I don't take them seriously anymore because all they do now is interrupt *other* people for no reason.
Marching in a library and stopping others from studying isn't constructive. Screaming at a guy who has done more for Civil rights in one year than you have in your whole life isn't constructive. Taking over events that have nothing to do with you and *making* them be about you isn't constructive.
I support the goals of BLM as much as anyone. However, I can't help but notice that they're conspicuously absent in cases of black-on-black murder. They seem to only appear in cases involving police (as they should), but generally ignore the day-to-day killings, often gang-related, that affect black communities even more.
Racism is deeply ingrained in all of Western society, and full power to BLM doing everything they can to bring about equal representation. However, banning the police from showing their commitment to a different minority group because they have an admittedly terrible history with your own is petty, selfish, and downright offensive.
Yes, LGBT Pride, as with all things, should be representative of ethnic minorities, but fuck you for stopping people who want to show their support from marching. Fuck you.
So, essentially you want LGBT officers and others to fuck off because you want them to? Because they dare defy you ?
Well, that just can't stand. Can it? So much for wanting equal representation.
Dammit. Just dammit . How egotistical do you have to be that you can't tell that you're acting just like the people you're protesting against?
That's...actually less terrible than I expected. I thought that the black homophobes who think homosexuality "is killing the black race" would be involved. This still sucks, but it's not rock bottom, at least.
I support the basic aims of Black Lives Matter, but I hate to see that biggest-victim competition. If everybody gets special recognition, nobody is special anymore. Pretty soon we will be seeing parades and fund drives for Left-handed Hispanic Autistic Lesbians with Tooth Decay.
....And besides, it only encourages the Christians.
Alexandra Williams, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, told CBC's Natasha Fatah that they held the sit-in because they wanted to hold Pride Toronto accountable for what she called "anti-blackness."
[...]
The group released a list of demands, including a commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staff, and to prioritize the hiring of black transgender women and indigenous people.
If your movement can't stand on it's own or be cooperative with another movement that is trying to make the world a better place, then you should rethink all of this. Demanding things instead of working with others isn't the way to do this.
If I was running Toronto Pride I'd put that list of demands in the shredder and announce that next year's theme was celebrating the LGBT people working for the city. BLM wouldn't be allowed in at all due to the previous year's bad behavior.
If they whined about this, I'd point out that an agreement made under duress is not enforceable.
I'd have walked right over them; they'd be free to get out of the way.
How dare they tell us or any other group what to do? Fascism is despicable regardless of race or belief system. And, as another poster noted, this was signed under duress and has no authority whatsoever.
I'm all for Black Lives Matter but this particular bunch of BLM folks are riduculous!
Why couldn't they have a nice calm meeting with the LGBTAQ organization and work something out?
If you have to act like a hateful idiot in order to demand positive social change....YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!
I sometimes wonder if these are Agent Provocateurs rather than genuine activists? "The Man" pretending to be members of a protesting group and acting like idiots in order to discredit said group is one of the oldest tricks in the "Authoritarian Establishment" playbook.
I also heard somewhere that BLM is not one monolithic established organization. There are a bunch of groups that are "Black Lives Matter". Most are decent but some are kooks.
The response to the Black Lives Matter sit in and demands has been overwhelmingly negative here in Toronto. Their stunt has backfired spectacularly. Of course it is doubtful that the agreement has any moral of legal force behind it given the circumstances under which it was signed.
I just don't get it. These people do have a valid point but man are they bad at publicity.
The way to beat these people is to ignore them. Rarely can they honestly affect you. But if you want to hate gay police officers in Toronto, sure. BLM is turning into a hate group--they have no responsibility to anyone but themselves. If we call the New Black Panther Party a hate group, the time is soon we'll have to call Black Lives Matter a hate group. Anyone who wants to stop police shootings should organise under a new banner, because the banner now is tainted.
@SpukiKitty
It's like Gamergate--a good idea in context, ruined by all the idiots flocking to the banner. I was behind BLM in Ferguson and such. But we see they are devolving into basically just what the New Black Panther Party wishes they could do, with media respectability.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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