There was a time when Edmonton's Pride Festivities were not sanctioned by City Hall. For many this reduced the legitimacy of the events, the ease with which Pride could attract a strong audience, sponsorship, pool of volunteers and diminished its ability to secure a sustainable future. This of course did not stop members of Edmonton's LGBT communities from putting on and attending Pride all the while also lobbying Edmonton City Hall to reconsider. Under threat of a human rights complaint, former Mayor Bill Smith begrudgingly granted Edmonton's Pride celebration a proclamation in 2003. The year after, then-new mayor Stephen Mandel fully supported Pride by providing the proclamation as well as partaking in the parade. Since 2004, under the hard work of committed volunteers and one paid staff, Pride has grown into a more legitimized event attracting thousands in audience numbers and sponsorship dollars.
As part of 2009's Edmonton Pride there were three separate acts of peaceful protest at the parade, and following, facilitated by queer groups. The first, the Queer Liberation Army marched in the parade with placards that read "My Pride is Not for Sale" in protest to the parade's naming rights being given over to TD Canada Trust and the overt commercialization of the event. The second action, also part of the parade, was walking entry partners Exposure: Edmonton's Queer Arts and Culture Festival (of which I am a member) and Mile Zero Dance's various improvised movements such as die-ins in protest, and in front of, the manned military tank entered into the parade by Edmonton Police Service. The groups questioned the involvement of such an aggressive weapon as part of an LGBT event. The last act of civil disobedience was the placard and megaphone interruption of Progressive Conservative MLA Heather Klimchuk's speech by the Queer Allied Network during the celebrations after the Parade due to the PC party's delisting of sexual reassignment surgery and passing of Bill 44, which at once finally and tardily enshrined sexual minorities into Alberta's human rights legislation while limiting the ways in which Alberta teachers can teach important topics such as sexuality.
Last month Pride Toronto, in preparation for 2010 Pride, as well as thinking about World Pride 2014, which Toronto will be hosting, announced that all signs in the Pride parade must be vetted by a Pride Toronto ethics committee to, "ensure that messages support the theme of the 2010 festival." In reaction to the attempt to curb freedom of speech, "Social media exploded" writes XTRA.ca's Marcus McCann who summarized what happened in a great article entitled "How a Queer Protest Pushed Pride Toronto to Withdraw its Censorship Policy." Facebook groups were started, letter writing began and Twitter was used all resulting in Pride Toronto rescinding the idea.
Above the tact or content of the protests in Edmonton and Toronto, the fact they exist is a sign of progress and a direct link to Pride's riot roots. In the past the act of producing Pride in Edmonton was a form of activism as a result to the hostility from the City of Edmonton. Once the City provided it with its seal of approval activist energy, as experienced in 2009, could shift from a united front to have Pride happen to spread to multiple focuses that serve to question Pride as well as see Pride as a site for bigger conversations that affect queer people.
Moving forward protests of Pride are important because they provide an example of the ways in which we, who it can be argued have shared and/or overlapping identities (LGBT and Queer people), can oppose each other, have conversations with each other and articulate our important differences.
For me this is an important realization. More and more I find myself disengaged by the current gay and lesbian groups and movement that in some ways are typified by the existing incarnation of Pride. I feel that much of the work being done in terms of gay rights is coming at the expense of segments of society and limit true gains for everyone. I feel that by virtue of being same sex attracted I am lumped into these conversations and provided a point of view I don't agree with in the same way people walk away from Pride thinking that being gay is just about hot boys in booty shorts and biker ladies with no bras.
In thinking about a queer future I think Pride is a perfect shared site to dismantle ideas of a homogenous homosexual community. For me it is also a good time to engage in dialogue on the ways queer identities are disappeared, misused, and assumed within the larger LGBT context, how our queer consent has been assumed or misappropriated to push ideals we may not believe in.
The act of questioning and pushing forward is at the heart of Pride. Lest we forget Stonewall '69: Pride was born a protest.
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