Pride Toronto (PT) will not postpone its AGM, despite asking people to weigh in on the pros and cons of doing so.
In June, PT announced a community consultation process to get a sense of queer and trans priorities for the
festival. It was also designed to help heal the rift caused by PT's
decision to ban the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, a decision
that threatened to derail festivities until it was retracted at the
11th hour.
The Pride Coalition for Free Speech initially called for the AGM to be postponed until the community consultations were over, so that the community could implement the recommendations at the meeting. While PT used to have several general meetings a year, that has not been the case recently. That means the AGM is often the one time of year when the membership can directly effect change at the organization.
From PT's announcement:
Much of the feedback in favour of postponing the AGM was related to
the community consultation process. The consultation process will
be launched shortly and is expected to take until early 2011 to
complete. That timeline will not allow us to hold an AGM to wrap up the
festival year's business and officially start the planning process for
2011. We are committed to working closely with the community
consultation panel on a communications plan throughout the process.
We
will therefore hold our AGM as planned on 23 September 2010. We
encourage our members to attend the AGM with a view to ensuring that
they elect the candidates they want to see on the 2011 Board that will
be responsible for implementing the results of the consultations.
PT's AGM will be held Sept 23 at 6:30pm at 83 Alexander St.
