Dear radical queer walking tour participants:
I was one of the organizers of the first Lesbian and Gay Pride Day march in Toronto in 1981 held at the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots. 1,500 people came together to celebrate and protest gathering at Grange Park for a festival and concert before the march. While we had a lot of fun it was also a very political event with the march stopping outside 52 Division police station to chant “Fuck You 52!” and “No More Shit!” 1981 was the year of resistance to the bath raids when we turned the city on its ear in our mass response to police repression.
As well as being involved in the Right to Privacy Committee that organized the resistance to the bath raids I was also a member of Gay Liberation Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE) which organised against the growth of the anti-gay, anti-feminist, racist and anti-working class right-wing which was then on the rise. It was GLARE which initiated the Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee that year so we would have a day of both celebration and organizing and we worked with Lesbians Against the Right, the Right to Privacy Committee and many others to pull off a successful Pride Day. We were even ‘red-baited’ by some of the gay businesses that year as ‘a bunch of commies.’
This early history of Pride organizing in this city is hardly ever remembered now given the historical amnesia produced by corporate Pride that forgets that we are celebrating the Stonewall riots against police repression that was led by queers of colour, many of whom were ‘butch’ dykes and drag queens. It is important to hold onto the resistance of remembering our activist histories in response to the social organization of forgetting of our histories of defiance and subversion. When people in Pride and the City have tried to ban and repress QuAIA (Queers Against Israeli Apartheid) they have violated a history of organizing Pride that was based on solidarity among all oppressed people. Just as many of us joined in the fight against South African apartheid in the 1980s it is vital for us to show our active solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against current Israeli state separation and subordination (or apartheid) policies.
Even though it was street queers and radical queers who powered our resistance in the streets when these mobilizations died down it was a strata of white middle class gay men who reaped most of the benefits and began to speak for our ‘community’ given they spoke the same language as those in power. It is now this layer, or class, that has hegemony in much of our ‘community’ and their horizon is limited to acceptance, toleration and ‘equality’ within a white dominated, patriarchal and capitalist society. This also means they exclude many of us who can’t fit into this mold on account of racialization, class, poverty, gender and gender performance, refusal to be contained by marriage and wanting to continue to explore sexual liberation, involvement in sex work and so much more.
On Pride given state and corporate support they now expect us to perform ourselves as ‘good,’ ‘patriotic,’ and ‘loyal’ homonationalist ‘citizens’ who agree with Canadian state policies in defence of the Israeli state occupation of Palestine and the national security ‘war on terror’ against Arab and Islamic identified people and other people of colour. It is important to reject this and to remember the Canadian state war on queers from the 1950s until the 1990s (that continues in some ways) that led to major purges of queers in the public service and military. Regarding national security we always have to ask whose nation and whose security is being defended? During the war on queers they tried to expel us from the fabric of the nation while constructing heterosexuality as the only ‘normal,’ and ‘safe’ sexuality. During the current ‘war on terror’ they are attempting to expel Islamic and Arab identified people and other people of colour – including queers of colour – from the fabric of the nation-state while intensifying its ‘white’ racializing character. Just as we defeated major aspects of the Canadian war on queers we can defeat the racist ‘war on terror.’
Remembering our activist histories that those in power want us to forget is an important part of making powerful liberation movements and remaking a radical queer politics. Best wishes for the walk and for reclaiming and making history!
Gary Kinsman is a long-time queer liberation, anti-poverty and anti-capitalist activist. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire and co-author of The Canadian War on Queers. His website is Radical Noise.