In light of the current political and social environment
No Pride Parade for you, Edmonton.
It is with heavy hearts that we inform you that the Board of Directors has voted to cancel the 2019 Edmonton Pride Festival. In light of the current political and social environment, it has been determined that any attempt to host a Festival will not be successful. Please keep in mind that we are a not-for-profit organization run almost solely by volunteers.
It has always been the goal of the Edmonton Pride Festival Society to host a safe and enjoyable event that is as reflective and encompassing of the entire community as possible, however given current events, we do not feel that this is attainable for this year.
The cancellation announcement comes less than one week after a controversial meeting that saw police called after members of Shades of Colour, a community APIRG group that exists to advocate for queer and trans Black people, Indigenous people, and people of colour, arrived to make speeches during the meeting.
I had to look up “APIRG” – Alberta Public Interest Research Group.
According to a post published on Shades of Colour’s Facebook page, The Edmonton Pride Festival Society believed that Shades of Colour and RaricaNow, a non-profit organization that promotes the rights of LGBTIQ+ refugees and newcomers in Canada, had arrived to protest, which prompted the call to police.
Shades of Colour states that neither their members nor RaricaNow’s members were protesting.
…
Following EPFS’ decision to cancel this year’s Pride Parade, Shades of Colour issued a release stating their disappointment at the outcome.
“It is with profound disappointment that we express our appallment at the actions carried out by the Edmonton Pride Festival Society, which culminated in their decision to cancel the 2019 Pride Festival,” an April 10 Shades of Colour post read.
“We are calling this decision for what it is: namely, a disavowal of deep systematic problems in the framework of EPFS as well as an attempt to dismiss, target, and put out of play the efforts put on the part of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour in the LGBTQ2S+ to point towards alternatives on how this organization carries out its activities.”
The parade was stopped for half an hour last year when people protesting the presence of cops and the military brought it to a halt.
In the months leading up to the April 4 meeting, Shades of Colour had laid out a list of seven demands for the 2019 Pride Parade, which included that the event open with a “protest lead by QTIBPOC, trans folks and their allies” that would replace the Pride Parade, and that all participants of said protest be either approved or denied by Shades of Colour and RaricaNow following an application process.
The demands also included that both Shades of Colour and RaricaNow be supplied with $20,000 each of the annual funds, that the SOC Team and the RaricaNow team be provided with money to access ongoing training, that $1,500 be provided to fund a SOC organized QTIBPOC sober dance party on the evening of pride, that a public accountability statement outlining the harm the EPFS has caused the QTIBPOC community be written along with a public commitment to rectifying that harm, that Shades of Colour and RaricaNow be featured on the front four pages of the Pride Guide, and that EPFS work with RaricaNow to support QTIBPOC refugees and newcomers.
So, that’s not a “protest,” that’s a set of demands, and quite exorbitant demands at that.
H/t Screechy Monkey
I admit to having largely disengaged from Canadian Pride events in recent years, owing to the presence of corporations as well as police and military representatives, but…I would rather those organizations be present at Prides rather than forcibly suppressing LGBT people of any colour or origin. The delusional demands of these kids would be impossible to countenance if those institutions were still against us.
A sober dance party?
*sirens* *searchlights* *helicopters*
Stop right there! Writing police are on the case!
How can you be disappointed to find something appalling? If you consider something appalling, why be disappointed at identifying it as such? And is appalled (NOT appallment for fuck sake) really the right word for what you felt? It is roughly synonymous with horrified; were you horrified at the cancellation? It seems to me that you were disappointed at the cancellation, but you thought disappointed was too weak so you threw in some emotional intensification.
Next time, pick up a thesaurus or just go with dismayed.
Sigh. The action they took was to cancel the thing. They did not take actions which then culminated in cancellation.
This person is cursed with a common writing malady: ornamenting their text to make it longer and less plain, and the writer appear more learned.
I had to look this one up, and it is sillier than I expected. It stands for Queer, Trans, Indigenous, Black Person Of Colour. You might think the POC covers the B and I, but no, as usual everything needs to be spelled out individually (B, I) and also under an umbrella term (POC) within the same initialism, which itself is an umbrella term. Very much like the Q, which itself started out as a general term but was then included in an umbrella term which also spelled out the individual categories covered by the Q.
Speaking of: LGBTQ2S+. Where did the I go?? Exclusionary! Oh, it’s probably covered by the +, which seems to mean ‘…and everything else.’ Yet another nested umbrella term covering everything not spelled out within the parent umbrella term.
(I seem to have woken up on the language pedant side of my bed today.)
Understatement! They want total control over the event.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/018/459/53697461.jpg
Holms, I guess that’s what they mean by rad fems being exclusive. We don’t have letters that encompass every single person in the universe (except women, of course). If we just had enough letters, we’d be okay. But our letters are…well, we don’t actually have letters, do we? We’re just women…which is a pretty damn encompassing term, if you ask me. It encompasses everyone who is not a man. Only now it’s supposed to encompass men, as well, and of course preferentially.
The police were called because about 30 members of the groups making demands showed up and pushed their way into the meeting room when they were told they couldn’t go in. They made the festival board members feel so unsafe that they called the police and moved to a second location. This CBC article has the details: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-pride-festival-cancelled-2019-1.5093276
Thank you, that’s useful.
From Jennifer’s link:
Pretty sure the actual irony escapes this one.