Black Lives Matter get police float kicked out of Pride Parade

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Yeah, man, that's totally what I said. Why make that post? Why do you feel the need to be a dick?

I understand your world view - or I believe I do; if you think otherwise I'd be happy to hear your explanation of it rather than your sarcasm and condescension. From what I understand of what you think, I simply disagree with you completely and see basically no hope of finding common ground.

[MelBridgeman]

one word

Chicago

that's the end result

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Lesson: don't let BLM protest for black gay rights amongst the community.

You'll upset the straight white people?

This guy isn't straight.

Dear Pride Toronto,

I am writing today to address concerns I have with your recent agreement with Black Lives Matter TO. I am particularly concerned with your willingness to remove all police floats and booths in future parades and community spaces. I should give you my background first.

I am a Toronto Police Service Constable, and a homosexual. I have been on the job 8yrs. Prior to becoming a Police Officer, I served in the Canadian Armed Forces and completed a tour in Kandahar Afghanistan in 2006-2007.

I never "came out" while serving in the military. Though not for fear of persecution, I only told a select few about my orientation. I was still quite young and was simply not ready.

It wasn't until 2012 that I decided to come out. I began to tell a few peers at work, and soon word spread. I can say with absolute pride, that my peers, and my employers/senior management have never made an inappropriate comment to me. I have never been made to feel discriminated against.

This year, 2016, marked a first for me. My first PRIDE parade. I would be working, nonetheless it would be my first one in any capacity. WOW what an event. What a spectacle, a joining of everyone.

The 2016 pride events really opened my eyes to something. The support that I have from my peers and supervisors has been unwavering. When I saw all those floats and officers marching (100's), I realized that my employer fully supports this part of me, and so many others like me. As I stood post at Yonge and College, ensuring a safe atmosphere, Chief Mark Saunders came up to me. I had the opportunity to salute him, and I knew that I had a leader who was invested in this celebration of PRIDE.

LGBTQ cops have struggled for decades. I am fortunate, because it is their struggles in the past, that have made my orientation an irrelevant factor in my workplace interactions. Members of police services, and their employers (like RBC, Telus, Porter, etc) have just as much right to participate as any other group. Police Officers are significantly represented in the LGBTQ community and it would be unacceptable to alienate and discriminate against them and those who support them. They to struggled to gain a place and workplace free from discrimination and bias.

I do not speak for the Police, and I do not speak for the LGBTQ community. I speak as an individual, one who saw his first PRIDE, only to be excluded from the next.

Exclusion does not promote inclusion.

Chuck Krangle

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

It basically just goes to show that a portion of the people involved in it really have zero concept of it at all. It's origins are meaningless. It's just a "family friendly community parade!" The BLM movement took issue with the way the racially marginalised groups are treated amongst the queer community. That is a REAL problem. What do any of you know about it?

It's basically a reason I don't go to Pride parades. They are often meaningless. This one had meaning, and surprise, it upset a bunch of straight white people. Shocker.

So you'd be cool with a group of gay activists getting up on stage at the Toronto Caribbean festival and refusing to leave until the board agreed to replace half the members of the Cari Fest board with LGBTQ members?

And who's to say the BLM leadership in Toronto is representative of the black community? What if next year members of the black community in Toronto announced they would boycott the Pride parade if BLM were allowed to take part?

The question is do all demands from people who feel they are disenfranchised need to be met. And if we put such power in the hands of anyone who claims to be disenfranchised, shouldn't we be concerned about what kind of people are attracted to lead these groups? The impulse to bully doesn't know any boundaries of race, gender, or religion.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

You heard it here first. We're all the same and treated like it. No need to stand up for awareness. It's us homos and blacks that are causing the ruckus!

Let's say we relocate humanity to two islands. On one island we'll put all the people who believe we should regard other people primarily as members of an identifiable group. On the other, we'll put all people who believe we should regard one another as individuals. I'm confident that your island will be a far less pleasant place than mine.

[PepsiFree]

Maybe I just don't understand yours. But if I do understand it, then I think it's irrelevant in this situation and you basically just try shoehorn your "moderate" "anti-regressive leftists" views into every conversation even if it's not really relevant.

If you don't feel that is you, then explain yourself. No need to hashtag it up with language you know won't get through the filter, just explain yourself clearly.

What is your problem with what happened? What did YOU catch, that Psycnet, myself, the executive director of the Pride parade who invited BLM and was happy with the results, gay activists, and a lot of the gay community as a whole miss? What issue did we forget to be concerned about regarding the Pride parade? What is the Pride parade about that you know and none of us do?

[VladtheImpaler]

Meh. Just replace the police float/booths with the Klan's next time and balance will be restored.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

More identity politics. You continue to prove my point. Different languages, different view of morality, different view of the world... everyone in their corner.

What we're seeing, after decades of social progress built on a rational, liberal, utilitarian models of morality, is a backsliding into primitive communal/sacred modes of thinking.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Let's say we relocate humanity to two islands. On one island we'll put all the people who believe we should regard other people primarily as members of an identifiable group. On the other, we'll put all people who believe we should regard one another as individuals. I'm confident that your island will be a far less pleasant place than mine.

Well, your island has never existed. Only my island exists, and it's basically taken years for multiple groups of that island not to be treated like human garbage. What fantasy are you living in? Did you forget what island you're on? Did you forget that slavery, racism, genocide based on religion, race, etc ever existed? You are ON the unpleasant island. You have been on it your entire life. Wake up!

As far as Chuck goes, there is a lot of layers to that argument. On one hand, we shouldn't go catering to minorities according to you, but let's go ahead and cater to the feelings of one gay cop. Ignore BLM as a whole because who knows. If their representative or disruptive, but make sure you listen to this one gay person, just for good measure, because he's a cop.

I'm not getting you at all on this one. Identity politics didn't build this island, it's a response to it.

[underGRADFlame]

Captain Holt "Look at that. You've helped me find my smile."

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Sorry, the executive director was happy? Could have fooled him - he claims he just signed the demands to keep the parade going.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...test-1.3663250

"Pride Toronto never agreed to exclude police services from the Pride parade... We have had, and will continue to have, discussions with the police about the nature of their involvement as parade participants,"

"Frankly, Black Lives Matter isn't going to tell us there's no more floats in the parade,"

"None of us do"? I'm pretty sure you're in the minority in reacting to this situation positively. At least I hope so.

I'm not going to type out a wall of text, for once. I think it would be lost on you. The problem is taking an event that was meant to be about inclusiveness, creating divisiveness along racial lines, and telling the world "our grievance is more important than your celebration of community". As for what the Pride parade is supposed to be, there are reasonable points of disagreement on that - it's legitimate to say that it should be more subversive, that that's what's great about gay culture... Frankly, that sounds a lot like the pro-gay-rebelling-culture argument against gay marriage that peter12 was accused of trolling for putting out there in the now-locked Orlando thread, but I take the point. From the other side, it's absolutely ####ing fantastic that we've made progress to a point where families can bring their kids to the pride parade and leave no doubt in their minds that LGBT people are part of our community, that who they are is no better or worse than any other way of being. Gay people are everywhere in our community - in media, in classrooms, in trades, and yeah, in the police force, and they don't have to hide who they are anymore. That's worth celebrating. Whatever you want the Toronto Pride parade to be, that's what it is, and that's a good thing. BLM ####ed up a good thing.

Sorry, that won't get through the filter, but that's how I feel. I don't want to argue with you about it, it's clearly pointless and it seems really likely that you're just going to keep being a jerk.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

From the other side, it's absolutely ####ing fantastic that we've made progress to a point where families can bring their kids to the pride parade and leave no doubt in their minds that LGBT people are part of our community, that who they are is no better or worse than any other way of being. Gay people are everywhere in our community - in media, in classrooms, in trades, and yeah, in the police force, and they don't have to hide who they are anymore. That's worth celebrating. Whatever you want the Toronto Pride parade to be, that's what it is, and that's a good thing. BLM ####ed up a good thing.

Sorry, that won't get through the filter, but that's how I feel. I don't want to argue with you about it, it's clearly pointless and it seems really likely that you're just going to keep being a jerk.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the family side of things and I apologise if you think I'm being a jerk. For the record, I think you're one a lot too. That's what happens when two people passionately disagree on almost everything.

The BLM protest was meant to inject current politics into an event that has essentially lost any relevant political meaning. There is a large issue that BLM looked to address regarding the community, and I feel it was educational. You might not like it, but then you wouldn't have liked the Pride parade in the beginning, would you have?

BLM didn't ruin anything. They were invited, they took their stand, they attempted change through force. That has happened many times in the gay community, and it's respectable.

The Pride parade shouldn't always just be a hunky dory family parade with a bit of flair. It should be a vessel for political change too, even if it's political change within the community it originated from.

And that's all I have to say about it.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

You might not like it, but then you wouldn't have liked the Pride parade in the beginning, would you have?

What is this supposed to mean?

[sun]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Hey look! Malcolm X's civil rights attitude won! #### MLK, that wimp.

Look, I pretty much give up. An event like this speaks for itself and peoples' intuitions about it tell you how they look at the world. If people like Psycnet and Pepsifree can look at an event like this and say, "Yeah, this represents the sort of thing I'm in favour of. This isn't at all misguided or counterproductive. Good job guys. Keep giv'n'r"... then there's nothing left to talk about. I'm seriously out of hope for any possibility of convergence. We're speaking different languages.

I just really hope everyone stops capitulating to these #######s.

*"pretty much" gives up*
*posts five more times in quick succession*

[Zarley]

How is Black Lives Matter relevant to Canada? Does Toronto have a long history of police brutality culminating in the killing of innocent black individuals? Is there a culture of institutionalized racism that needs to be addressed?

I'd agree that we have issues here in Canada with racism, particularly towards the indigenous community, but the magnitude of these pales in comparison to the problems in the United States. To me, BLM in Toronto is simply an appropriation of a real movement in the U.S. by a group of foolish activists looking to bring attention to themselves.

[peter12]

Pepsi is right that the Pride parades basically started as a "stick it the bougies, let's show them how weird we really are" kind of thing. I've watched a few docs, and read a few books, about Pride in the early/mid 80's in San Francisco. They weren't really intended to be family-friendly events. In fact, they were more or less preludes to the bathhouse orgy that followed soon after - ff you don't believe me, read "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts or F#####s by Larry Kramer.

The overall movement was antagonistic from the get-go. ACT-UP - an AIDS advocacy group - was basically the real forerunner of groups like BLM - the sit-down and confrontational style of negotiation was invented and perfected by them, and they were pretty effective from an activists' perspective.

The problem was, and is, with these kind of negotiation tactics is that they caricature their opponent. When you use bullying as a way to get things done, you tend to distort something that could be dealt with through reason and solidarity, into something fragmented, and disjointed. ACT-UP realized this in the mid-1990s after it was discovered that all of the drugs they had demanded for human trials without regulatory approval were basically ineffective, and that they had forced their opponents in the pharmaceutical, and government sector into a corner where the only effective response to ACT-UP was immediate acquiescence out of fear of retribution.

ACT-UP also caused the gay movement in major cities to break up into factions - further deteriorating the overall effectiveness of community engagement and cohesion - things like safe sex drives, home care networks etc... took a backseat to political activism, and grandstanding.

Some of the leadership of ACT-UP has later said they wished that they had worked to get closer with regulatory, government, and private sector organizations to increase cohesion within the gay community. They said that the cleavages wrought by their actions made the AIDS even worse, and also replaced hope with fear - something that the gay community clearly does not need more of.

BLM is the same. They are disrupting a community that has just started to heal. These tactics are unacceptable from a democratic, liberal, or community perspective.

[CaptainCrunch]

At the end of the day next year, I'm betting that BLM won't be allowed to put a float in the parade because of the disruption that they caused, and because they can't be trusted not to do it again.

And the Police will be invited back.

[Bandwagon In Flames]

Does anyone have an answer as to why BLM exists in Canada? And why they hate the Toronto police so much?

This actually pisses me off because racist police brutality doesn't exist in Canada. This is an actual issue in the US and has no relevance to Toronto or Canada.

I chalk this up as a bunch of ignorant people seeking attention and not realizing that there is a difference between Canadian and American police forces. They see cops getting trashed online and assume this hate applies to all policemen.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I don't think there is anything wrong with the family side of things and I apologise if you think I'm being a jerk. For the record, I think you're one a lot too. That's what happens when two people passionately disagree on almost everything.

The BLM protest was meant to inject current politics into an event that has essentially lost any relevant political meaning. There is a large issue that BLM looked to address regarding the community, and I feel it was educational. You might not like it, but then you wouldn't have liked the Pride parade in the beginning, would you have?

BLM didn't ruin anything. They were invited, they took their stand, they attempted change through force. That has happened many times in the gay community, and it's respectable.

The Pride parade shouldn't always just be a hunky dory family parade with a bit of flair. It should be a vessel for political change too, even if it's political change within the community it originated from.

And that's all I have to say about it.

Dude, why do you get to be the self-righteous gay crusader?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

At the end of the day next year, I'm betting that BLM won't be allowed to put a float in the parade because of the disruption that they caused, and because they can't be trusted not to do it again.

And the Police will be invited back.

And so it should. Getting gay police to march in a gay pride parade is a fantastic political victory for the gay community. In San Francisco, in 1978, the cops would have been wading in with clubs and fists.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Well, your island has never existed. Only my island exists, and it's basically taken years for multiple groups of that island not to be treated like human garbage. What fantasy are you living in? Did you forget what island you're on? Did you forget that slavery, racism, genocide based on religion, race, etc ever existed? You are ON the unpleasant island. You have been on it your entire life. Wake up!

And have you missed the progress that has taken place over the last 50 years? Where has that progress taken place? And why has that progress taken place? Answers those questions and you might see why identity politics is inimical to liberalism, and is a dead-end when it comes to tolerance, progress, and individual liberty.

I can't begin to get my head around the notion that the way to address centuries of prejudice where people were regarded as members of a group and not individuals is to regard people as members of a group and not as individuals.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Bandwagon In Flames

This actually pisses me off because racist police brutality doesn't exist in Canada. This is an actual issue in the US and has no relevance to Toronto or Canada.

This is the whitest thing I have ever read on this forum.