Pride Toronto un-bans "Israel Apartheid"!

Just shows you what can happen when you stand up for your rights.
Full story including Pride Toronto's press release at XTRA!

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What is Pride Toronto so afraid of?

"I cannot be part of the silencing our communities. Our diversity is our strength; our struggles to end war, make peace, justice and freedom ring in every land. We as queers live, love and die in every land and I will not be silenced or stand in silent complicity while others are oppressed and silenced by those wanting corporate trinkets." Faith Nolan on returning her 2009 award to Pride Toronto.

The battle over free speech at Toronto's Gay Pride parade is heating up. Over 20 current and former honorees have returned their awards to Pride Toronto, along with an award of their own to the committee: the first ever Shame Award. And what was Pride Toronto's response? Well, they kept a low profile, as in their office was locked and they were nowhere to be found, although they did manage to call the police to say they were worried about acts of vandalism to their office. Oh please.

Why is Tracey Sandilands and the 4 members of Pride Toronto who supported censorship so afraid of the community they purport to represent? Why are they afraid of the very backbone of the community, the people who are largely responsible for the existence of Gay Pride? And why did they attempt to frame the symbolic gesture of returning the awards as something that could lead to violence?

I met a member of the committee at a party this past weekend. Because it was a social setting and because I was sure she'd had more than her fill of talking about this issue, I didn't bring it up. But when one of the honorees joined us, they soon got into it and for them the over-riding issue was that of censorship. Censorship has been fundamental to suppressing minorities since basically forever, and the fact that the Pride Toronto committee embraced it, without even putting up a fight was both chilling and extremely depressing to both. As it is to me.

Pride's executive director Tracey Sandilands has said that funding was in jeopardy putting the whole event in question. She's referring to a Toronto city council motion put forward by Giorgio Mammoliti to make the city's funding contingent on banning the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). The motion was referred to executive committee. It has not even been adopted, and in fact there was a good likelihood that it would not have been. But Sandilands and other members of the board decided to take pre-emptive action, and in a 4-3 vote, they banned QuAIA and introduced censorship.

At a meeting prior to returning the honours, Jane Farrow said that all performers at Pride Toronto (notice how the word gay is not even part of the name anymore) must sign an agreement promising not to say anything offensive or political. I guess being queer is just a lifestyle choice now, and the decades of political struggle are something that needs to be shoved under the rug, or into the closet.

Below is a video of most of the meeting, or you can watch and read more at Xtra! who have been covering this issue in depth. QuAIA has a complete list of all the honorees who returned their awards, with statements from each. There are so many trailblazers there, so many who defied the homophobia of the times to get us to where we are today. It's a shame that where we are is in denial.

Watch live streaming video from xtraonline at livestream.com

EDITED AT 1:10 PM TO FIX VIDEO WIDTH

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Yet another gay activist snubs Pride Toronto

Michelle Walker, one of the founders of Vancouver's Dyke March has joined Alan Li and Jane Farrow in declining honours from Pride Toronto citing its decision to implement censorship for the first time in its 30-year history when it banned the words "Israeli Apartheid".

I was genuinely excited and honoured to be selected as the recipient of Pride Toronto's Community Service Award this year. However, in light of recent free speech censorship actions taken by Pride Toronto - censoring of the words 'Israeli apartheid' during this year's Pride celebrations - I have come to realize that to accept this award would be to violate the spirit it honours: a dedication to queer community. I sincerely appreciate the recognition, but until such a time that Pride Toronto realizes the crucial importance of allowing free speech to all of Toronto's queer community, I must respectfully decline the honour.

Read the full text here.
 
This is becoming a very divisive issue in Toronto's gay community, with some people blaming QuAIA for "ruining our parade" which they claim should be a politics-free celebration. Hey, no one likes a Charlie's Angels tribute float better than I do, but some of us remember the long struggle for gay rights, and why it was so important. Just because we have achieved equality under the law, is no reason to rest on our ruby slippers. We may not be in Kansas anymore, but there's a pervasive desire coming from the bigots and religious zealots who have infiltrated all levels of government, to send us right back there.

Gay pride is about to get a whole lot more political. Buckle your seat belt Dorothy!
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Jane Farrow declines Pride Toronto's Honoured Dyke title

Jane Farrow has rejected Pride Toronto's invitation to be this year's "Honoured Dyke" citing the censorship of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. From her letter published today by XTRA! and sent to the Pride Toronto board:

"As a long time cultural producer, journalist and community organizer, the practice and ideals of free speech are very dear to me. I also value and celebrate the political essence of my queer identity. Queers have rightfully insisted that the personal is political, so when more than a few of us get together in one place, political terrain is created. To me, queer gatherings of any sort – parades, demos, cultural events, sporting clubs and disco dance parties – are and always will be implicitly political events. It's little wonder then that a wide variety of political groups and voices seek to be heard at pride festivities."

She continues:

"A discourse of 'safety' and 'inclusion' has been put forward to justify censorship at Pride 2010. I feel this is unfortunate and wrong-headed. I, like many people, do not feel 'safer' or 'included' by any decision to limit political speech. Quite the opposite. As history shows, suppressing people's right to express and explore political difference leads to some very dark and dangerous places." 

Farrow joins Dr. Alan Li in declining honorary titles bestowed by Pride Toronto. It's very telling that real activists, the ones who actually participated in the struggle for gay rights in this country, are also the ones who've declined to legitimize the censorship and attempts to de-politicize by the current Pride Toronto board of directors.

UPDATE: Pink Triangle Press, publishers of XTRA! magazine call upon the Pride committee to reverse their decision to ban QuAIA.
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Alan Li rejects appointment as Pride Toronto's grand marshal

Pride Toronto's choice for grand marshal of the 2010 Pride Parade has refused his appointment, citing the organization's censorship of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA).

Dr Alan Li says he was flattered to be chosen, but "after serious reflection" he decided to decline the title.
FULL ARTICLE AT XTRA

“I have been actively involved in many social justice movements locally and internationally for more than thirty years,” says Dr. Li, a co-founder of Gay Asians Toronto, Asian Community AIDS Services, the multicultural Coalition Against Homophobia, and the first openly gay president of the Chinese Canadian National Council. “I thus remember very clearly our community’s battles against censorship that attempted to invalidate our concerns, minimize our struggles and silence our voices.”

The complete text of Dr. Li's letter is available at QuAIA.

ADDENDUM: Who is Martin Gladstone? by Tim McCaskell
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Open Letter to Pride Toronto from founders of Pride in 1981

May 27, 2010

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.


1981 TORONTO PROTEST OVER BATH-HOUSE RAIDS

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, member of Lesbians Against the Right.

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.

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Toronto Gay Pride vs QuAIA Update

Well, it's official. The Pride Toronto committee confirmed today in a news conference that the words "Israeli Apartheid" would be banned from all Pride events.

About 100 protesters gathered outside Pride Toronto's offices for the announcement, chanting "Resign! Resign! and demanding the committee reverse the decision to impose censorship on Toronto gay pride events - the first time in its 30-year history that such a measure has been imposed.

Pride Toronto's official press release is here.

QuAIA's response is here.

The Facebook group Pride Coalition for Free Speech is here.
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Toronto Gay Pride vs Queers Against Israeli Apartheid - the plot thickens

"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire.


ELLE FLANDERS AND MARTIN GLADSTONE DUKE IT OUT

What would happen to Toronto's Gay Pride festival if there were no government grants or corporate sponsorships?

Well, I guess there'd be no Molson's beer garden or TD logo's. And I imagine a lot of people would still party on like they have been doing ever since the first gay pride march in 1981. But the most important difference would be that there would far less government and corporate interference, and tactics like withholding funding as a means to bully the community into self-censorship would have no leverage.

This morning's webcrawl turned up a very interesting article at Muzzlewatch, the blog of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Cecille Surasky, in an article called The Israel Lobby's smear campaign and Toronto Gay Pride writes:

What’s remarkable about Toronto isn’t that some oppose QuAIA’s presence in the parade–in the classic tradition of LGBT parades, which are by their very nature acts of political resistance, QuAIA’s message is challenging and it’s meant to be. What’s amazing is that their opponents– who object to the term “apartheid” despite its almost commonplace usage by many Israelis–have resorted to openly duplicitous and unethical means for literally banishing the group and harming the parade to achieve their aims.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. You can’t ban a group for using the word ‘apartheid’, so you have to fabricate evidence to suggest the group is a hate group. And that’s exactly what’s happening to QuAIA, which, surprise surprise, includes a lot of self-loving anti-occupation Jews.

She goes on to detail the attempt to pinkwash Israel, portraying it as a gay Mecca -- oops, strike that -- a gay haven amid a sea of homophobic Arab states. This is part of a Brand Israel project which has identified gays as mostly liberal (hmm…wonder why?) who tend to support human rights for all -- even Palestinians.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the chill is on and it has now become impossible to offer any critique of Israel's policies without being branded an anti-semite. Being Jewish oneself makes no difference, as you are simply "self-hating", like Naom Chomsky who was recently barred from entering Israel.

Toronto's Naomi Klein was also falsely accused by a group called the Reut Institute of opposing Israel's right to exist. The Reut Institute is an Israeli think tank which recently published a report on "hubs of delegitimization" in which it

"attempted to equate tactics of non-violent resistance… to force Israel to comply with international law — with a military campaign to destroy the state of Israel.
Most worrying, the report explicitly urged Israeli intelligence agencies like Mossad to take unspecified action against peace activists using entirely legal methods: 'Neither changing policy nor improving public relations will suffice…Faced with a potentially existential threat, Israel must treat it as such by focusing its intelligence agencies on this challenge; allocating appropriate resources; developing new knowledge; designing a strategy, executing it.' The think tank also called on the Israeli government to 'sabotage network catalysts' — defined as key players in the 'delegitimization network'.

The Reut report identified several cities with active Palestinian solidarity communities as 'hubs' in this supposed network, one hub being my own city of Toronto.."

Full article is here.

But back to Pride Toronto. Over at rabble.ca an article by Andrew Brett from 2009 says

"In Tuesday's edition of the Jewish Tribune, the political newspaper of B'nai Brith, pro-Israel lobbyists declared their intention to threaten government and corporate sponsorship of the annual Toronto Pride Festival unless the organization banned pro-Palestinian marchers from the parade."

That was last year and the attempt was unsuccessful. But, if at first you don't succeed, etc.

This year, they have added the help of city councillor Kyle Ray and Susan Levy of the Toronto Sun, both openly gay, plus mayoral candidates Giorgio Mammoliti and Rob Ford, both openly homophobic to craft a threat to withdraw city funding for Pride Toronto. We know the federal government has already withdrawn their funding.

B'nai Brith accuses QuAIA of "highjacking the gay agenda". Since when do they get to define the gay agenda?

Kyle Ray accuses QuIAI of politicizing Pride. Oh come now Kyle, the Pride Parade has been political since its inception.

Martin Gladstone has said the presence of QuAIA makes some people "uncomfortable". Well, if we're going to remove everything from the parade that makes some people uncomfortable, I guess we'll have to ban nipple rings, nudity, drag queens and really, when you get right down to it - all those queers!

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Gay Pride Toronto bans Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

Gay Pride Toronto's board of directors has banned the phrase "Israeli apartheid" from all Pride events, caving to pressure from Toronto city council, un-named corporate sponsors and the increasingly right-wing B'nai Brith, effectively shutting out the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

Homophobic mayoral candidate Giogio Mammoliti put forward a motion at city council, to be voted on June 14 that would kill Pride's funding if they didn't ban the group's participation. More here. Citing the need to keep Gay Pride from promoting a political agenda (huh?) Pride's executive director Tracey Sandlands said "no group or person is banned from participating" they just can't use certain words together on the same banner, namely Israel and apartheid, because that apparently incites hate.

Pride Toronto’s discrimination policy is the same one mandated by the City of Toronto for all organizations it funds, which “prohibits discrimination and harassment and protects the right to be free of hate activity.” Interesting that Mammoliti himself was the subject of an Ontario Human Rights Commission complaint alleging that he had promoted "hatred, discrimination and physical threats against the gay community."

This follows the cancellation of funding from the federal government, which many believe is ideological in nature, and also speaks to the right wing agenda of equating any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. By that logic, Israel itself is filled with anti-semitic Jews, including its own Defence Minister Ehud Barak who told an Israeli conference "If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don't, it is an apartheid state."

But in Canada no such examination is allowed. In 2009 Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B’nai Brith Canada, called for disciplinary action against the parade's grand marshall El-Farouk Khaki, a founder of the national support group Salaam: Queer Muslim Community, because he spoke to a QuAIA event on the weekend. That's their call?

Avi Benlolo, president and CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, commended the push to “deny funding to Pride unless it is willing to comply with the City’s anti-discrimination guidelines,” in a press release issued Apr 28.

To equate any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism is the latest right-wing bullshit, and ultimately serves only to trivialize real anti-semitism. It's is possible support the existence of Israel while deploring certain of its actions. Things do not always reduce to simple black and white terms. "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" said George Bush on the eve of his illegal invasion of Iraq. Not to mention, Palestinians and indeed all Arabs are semitic peoples.

To pretend that the decision to ban Queers Against Israel Apartheid because they don't want to promote a political agenda is both disingenuous and revisionist on the part of Pride Toronto. The annual expression of gay pride is itself political, and numerous political groups have marched in Toronto's parade over the years.

A self-identified pair of queer women commenting at the National Post said it best:

"We find the suggestion that Toronto Pride is banning groups that are advancing a political agenda to be contrary to the very spirit of pride day, and it is disheartening to hear the executive director of Pride Toronto making statements that don't seem to understand the political background of this event. While we understand your concerns about maintaining sponsorship dollars, we strongly feel that Pride must remain a political celebration that includes many different points of view."

Elle Flanders, a member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, said the group sought to express a political opinion at an event with a long political history.

“They’re trying to compare it to hate speech, and I find it deeply offensive, as somebody who’s been fighting human rights battles for a really long time, to hear that criticism of the state of Israel is somehow hate speech. No way,” said Flanders.

Flanders, one of many Jewish members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, added that she considered herself as a “big Jew-lover. And my Judaism taught me to stand up for what is right. This has nothing to do with anything other than criticism of Israel … Political difference need not be censored.”

More here, here and here.

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