The AJC reportedly had offered to shuttle its supporters to the meeting and to pay for child care, parking and membership fees in Pride. The AJC is the mainstream body that claims to represent Halifax’s 1,500 Jews. Halifax Pride is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) association whose main activity is organizing that city’s Pride Week every July. “It’s important for businesses to do so because it shows that the business is inclusive.The Atlantic Jewish Council (AJC) took over Halifax Pride’s annual general meeting the evening of October 5, packing it with over 200 people, an action that one Palestinian activist likened to “an occupation.” Jele has some thoughts about corporate interests in Pride, too: “I think everyone can show support during pride,” she said. “People who are mad (that Trudeau participates in pride events) don’t know what it’s like to not be accepted by your leaders and government,” she told me recently. Jele, who lives in Toronto, was overjoyed when she learned that the leader of her new home was marching in her city’s pride parade. Take, for example, my friend Yvonne Jele, a gay refugee from Uganda, who is practically brand new to Canada (she fled her native country last year). Yes, they are marginalized in society at large, but they have found a place where they belong.
Moreover, these activists are ever eager to identify privilege in other people but they are utterly blind to the privilege they enjoy themselves: they have integrated into a community of like-minded people. The corporatization of pride is a fact lamented by many queer activists in the west who appear to yearn for the good old days when the businesses we frequented and services we used didn’t want anything to do with us.ĭon’t get me wrong, I understand that corporate interests should share the stage with grassroots organizations, but the refusal by some in my community to see the upside of corporate involvement in pride leads me to believe that a number of LGBTQ activists are completely out of touch with reality. “Happy Pride! Here’s five dollars off your next souvlaki platter!” The corporatization of pride is perceived as a big problem, too: corporate sponsors preaching equality atop enormous company floats, cheesy guys in logo-embroidered thongs handing out coupons for various discounts. Trudeau was in attendance at Toronto’s pride parade in 2016, where Black Lives Matter Toronto managed not only to stage a successful protest that effected tangible change, but to dominate media coverage in the event’s aftermath.īut Trudeau’s presence isn’t the only thing irking some of Halifax’s LGBTQ groups, and similar groups across the country, several of which have boycotted official pride events in their respective cities in recent years. Yet a reminder is in order that a world leader’s presence at an event does not impede activists from making their voices heard. I don’t want to diminish the work done by groups such as Wilmot’s because it is important work.
This is real-world progress that you can see with your own two eyes and applaud. It will be unusual for a sitting PM to skip a well-known city’s pride parade, not commonplace. This means that when someone new is elected to the office of prime minister - a Conservative perhaps - the national expectation around major pride events will be one of attendance. Thanks to the PM, norms are slowly shifting to a point where it’s standard for a prime minister to attend not only a major city’s pride celebration, but a smaller city’s celebration as well: a city such as Halifax, where pride isn’t an international tourist draw. This may be true, but sometimes style counts for a great deal. Some say Trudeau is all style and no substance.
This Saturday, the PM will again make history when he becomes the first sitting prime minister to participate in another more understated but equally important celebration: the Halifax pride parade. Last summer, Justin Trudeau made history when he became the first sitting prime minister to march in the Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal pride parades (not all at once, of course).