Open Letter to the Toronto Pride Committee from founders of Pride in 1981:
As founding members of the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee,
and people involved in organizing the first Pride event in Toronto at
the end of June in 1981, we stand totally opposed to the decision of
the current Toronto Pride Committee to ban the use of "Israeli
Apartheid" at Toronto Pride events.
This banning of political speech is clearly an attempt to ban the
participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) and queer
Palestine Solidarity supporters from the parade and from participation
in a major event in our communities. This sets a very dangerous
precedent for the exclusion of certain political perspectives within
our movements and communities from Pride events. We call on the Pride
committee to immediately rescind this banning and to instead encourage
QuAIA's participation in the pride parade.
We remind people of the political roots of Pride in the Stonewall
rebellion against police repression in 1969 and that the Pride march in
1981 in Toronto grew out of our community resistance to the massive
bath raids of that year. On the Pride march in 1981 about a thousand of
us stopped in protest in front of 52 Division Police Station (which
played a major part in the raids) and our resistance to the bath raids
was rooted in solidarity with other communities (including the Black
and South Asian communities) also facing police repression. Two of the
initiating groups for Pride in 1981 -- Gay Liberation Against the Right
Everywhere (GLARE) and Lesbians Against the Right (LAR) -- organized
Pride as part of more general organizing against the moral conservative
right-wing. This included not only its anti-queer but also its
anti-feminist, racist and anti-working class agendas.
We also remember in the 1980s that lesbian and gay activists around the
world, including in Toronto in the Simon Nkoli Anti-Apartheid
Committee, took up the struggle not only for lesbian and gay rights in
South Africa but linked this to our opposition to the apartheid system
of racial segregation and white supremacy in South Africa. This global
queer solidarity helps to account for how it was that constitutional
protection for lesbians and gay men was first established in the new
post-apartheid South Africa.
Solidarity with all struggles against oppression has been a crucial
part of the history of Pride. To break this solidarity as the Pride
Committee has now done not only refuses to recognize how queer people
always live our lives in relation to race, class, gender, ability and
other forms of oppression but also breaks our connections with the
struggles of important allies who have assisted us in making the
important gains that we have won.
Signers:
Katherine Arnup, founding member of the Lesbian and Gay Pride Day
Committee, member of Lesbians Against the Right and Gay Liberation
Against the Right Everywhere.
Hugh English, one of the first organizers of Toronto Pride, a former
member of GLARE, and a queer in solidarity with struggles against
oppression around the world.
Amy Gottlieb, founding member of Lesbians Against the Right, Gays and
Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere and the Toronto Lesbian and Gay
Pride Committee.
Gary Kinsman, founding member of the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day
Committee, member of Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere,
member of the Simon Nkoli Anti-Apartheid Committee.
Ian Lumsden, founding member of the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day
Committee and member of Gay Liberation Against the Right Everywhere.
Michael Riordon, co-host (with Lorna Weir) of the first Toronto Lesbian
& Gay Pride Day, 1981; founding member of Bridges (between
gay/lesbian & Latin American liberation movements); author of the
forthcoming book, Our Way to Fight, on peace activists in Israel and
Palestine.
Lorna Weir, co-host (with Michael Riordon) of the first Toronto Lesbian
and Gay Pride Day, founding member of Lesbians Against the Right.
Brian Woods, member of Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere,
and founding member of the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee.
(image: Toronto Pride Parade 2008, Flickr, CC 2.0, Sweet One / Neal Jennings)
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