Reflections on Pride as a site of struggle for Palestine Solidarity and Active Support for BDS Campaigns.
Rough draft notes. I hope they are of use.
By Gary Kinsman
I start these draft and preliminary reflections on 2024 Pride marches, parades and festivals in ‘Canada’ in a global context combined with a ‘cross country’ approach with actions taking place from Vancouver to St. John’s, even though the focus here is often on struggles in Toronto/Tkaronto. The genocide against people in Gaza and in Palestine, more generally, as we hear about massacre after massacre every day, is an EMERGENCY! creating new and extended terrains of struggle within and around many Pride Committees, including those bound up with state and corporate sponsorship and funding[1] from governments, Banks and corporations supporting the genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people. Pride which originated in ‘Canada’ with the celebration of the We Demand! first lesbian and gay rights demonstration on Parliament Hill in 1971[2] and which later became more oriented around celebrating the Stonewall rebellion against police repression in 1969; the mass police bath raids in 1981 in Toronto and resistance to police repression in Montreal started off with liberationist and radical (getting to the root of the problem) approaches[3]. As Pride Committees became incorporated and institutionalized, and moved away from community and movement roots, which are still often more present in smaller urban centres, they developed corporate forms of organization with Executive Directors, Boards of Directors, staff and reliance on corporate and state funding as they became more narrow and restricted in their largely pro-capitalist and settler colonial forms of organizing[4]. Especially in the larger urban centres they became sites for homonationalist performance[5], including the strong defence of the Israeli state within ‘Canadian’ state formation [6]
In these reflections I explore how Pride Committees unevenly across the ‘Canadian’ territories beome terrains of struggle for queer and trans Palestine solidarity. This requires further analysis of compositions and social relations of struggle drawing on some of the acquisitions of autonomist Marxism and political activist ethnography[7]. These terms allow us to explicate the strengths, autonomy and limitations of our struggles, and to map through the knowledge developed in these struggles the ‘weak links’ and contradictions in ruling relations that we can push through as well as who we are up against and the networks, struggles, organizations, and allies/co-conspirators we can draw on. The references in the notes allow people to explore where these analytical struggle ‘concepts’ come from and hopefully others will be able to take this much further than the limited reflections I offer here.
This allows us to intensify and expand the composition of struggle for Palestine solidarity and active support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)[8]. Other sites of Palestine solidarity and BDS struggle I am not able to address here include the wave of student encampments sometimes referred to as the “student intifidah” in 2024 and the direct action blocking of arms manufacturers and calls for arms embargos by BDS Palestine solidarity and labour activists. These various fronts of struggle are up against state and corporate support for genocide against the Palestinian people and how this infiltrates and shapes liberal, social democratic, NGO, and even union circles; intensified criminalization and police actions; increasing anti-Palestinian racism; and often violent Zionist responses, including from ‘Save Israel’ forces who are a continuation of the right-wing and racist Jewish Defence League. .
This means recognizing that queer and trans community formation is a site of class, anti-racist, anti-colonialist and other social struggles[9]. For too long many have accepted the neoliberal notion that our communities are ‘classless’ and ‘raceless’ in character when they are actually riven with class, race, gender, ability, health and other social struggles. Until recently these class/race struggles have largely been engaged in only by white identified, middle-class, settler colonial neoliberal pro-capitalist social forces in a rather one-side struggle which we have only recently joined in from our sides.
Palestine solidarity is an important part of these struggles. Pride Committees as terrains of struggle have broadened with the upsurge in queer and trans Palestine solidarity, including with groups like Queers In Palestine in Palestine and in the Palestinian diaspora and their global call for support[10]; queer, trans and gender diverse people involved in groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement; Queers4Palestine groups and groups like the Coalition Against Pinkwashing in Toronto/Tkaronto. Ties with state and corporate forces involved in supporting and that are actively complicit in genocide is a clearer terrain of struggle now and we need to evaluate and intensify compositions of struggle we can mobilize on these terrains in active support of the BDS campaign called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005[11] and supported by many unions and organizations across ‘Canada’ This campaign is inspired by the successful global BDS campaign against South African apartheid, and also for two way active arms embargoes.
There were earlier terrains of struggle involving Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), Black Lives Matter groups[12], and more. However, what we face in 2024 is no longer simply the same terrain of struggle as QuAIA faced in Toronto when it was under attack from Pride Toronto and state and corporate sponsors especially from 2010-2014 when we needed opposition to censorship, pro-Palestine free speech, popular education and active support for the BDS campaign[13]. We now face new terrains of struggle given the global shift in the relation of forces with white ‘western’ state and capitalist support for genocide in Palestine; racist opposition to struggles in the ‘global south including support for the genocidal campaigns in Sudan and the Congo; growing criminalization of radical social movements including Palestine solidarity and that many of our supposed ‘friends’ are now clearly on the other side of the struggle.
With BLM related struggles, especially in 2016 and again with the global rebellion against anti-Black racism and the police in 2020 we challenged anti-Black racism and support for the police and carceral injustice in queer community formation. Defunding and abolishing the police became mass demands. These mobilizations were opposed to the collaboration and liaison with the police that has been central to neoliberal queer formation – those whose practice is based on support for neoliberal class and race formation[14].
We now also have global calls from Queers in Palestine and the BDS campaign for stepped up solidarity and support including arms embargoes. This is where we have to situate our current activism and organizing. This means moving far beyond simply seeing queer and trans struggles as being about limited democratic rights and taking place only within ‘official’ LGBT+ and Pride politics and instead knowing that our struggles are entwined and inter-locked with and part of anti-racist, anti-colonial class struggles. This is part of how Palestine solidarity has become so central to current more radical queer and trans liberation organizing across the ‘Canadian’ state and globally and is often associated with direct action politics..
What has occurred in Toronto/Tkaronto takes place in this broader context of Pride Committees across the ‘Canadian’ state becoming major sites of struggle for pro-Palestine solidarity organizing. In Winnipeg on June 2nd activists stopped the Pride Parade for 45 minutes in support of Palestine[15]. Pride Committees in Halifax and Sudbury issued statements in support of Palestine. In Halifax queer and trans Palestine solidarity activists through their organizing went further getting TD Bank and Scotia Bank to not appear in the parade since they knew they would be protested against. I was able to participate in this and we also organized to make sure that the Canadian Forces and the Liberal Party contingents had to leave the parade.
In St. John’s, Fredericton and Charlottetown where there is more community participation in Pride organizing their Pride marches were Pride Palestine solidarity marches and they broke all ties with corporate sponsors supporting genocide including TD Bank[16]. And more recently activists in Vancouver were able to stop the Pride parade there and Capital Pride (Ottawa) issued an important but at the same time inadequate statement in support of Palestine[17]. The statement is limited in major ways and its reference to BDS will not take place this year for their 2024 parade when TD Bank is a major sponsor but will only be taken into consideration in future sponsorship discussions.
But even this statement has faced virulent Zionist opposition with pro-Zionist organizations and individuals announcing they are leaving the parade as a result. Most of the Zionist opposition to Pride Committees adopting pro-Palestine positions has come from organizations located outside Pride Committees that gain more power as they are supported by state and corporate organizations with false charges of ‘anti-semitism,’ and in Ottawa the Mayor, Ottawa Hospital and CHEO, eastern Ontario’s children’s hospital, the University of Ottawa, the Ottawa-Carleton School Board, and now the Liberal Party of Canada have withdrawn from the march. These withdrawals have faced significant queer and trans community resistance. This Zionist pressure also has influence among some Pride Committee members and especially on Executive Directors and Boards of Directors given their corporate form of organizing. On this front of the social relations of struggle Palestine Solidarity faces from Zionist forces see the work of Judy Haiven[18] The weak links for the Zionist offensive are the many Jews Against Genocide groups and the social and historical distinctions that get made between criticisms of Israeli state policies and actual anti-semitism.
On August 10th, 2024 the day before the Official Montreal Pride parade the pro-Palestine Radical Pride March of hundreds was kettled and stopped by the Montreal police preventing it from marching through the Gay Village. This deployment of police containment and repression against queer and trans activists engaging in activism around Pride has not been as visible as in other Palestine Solidarity Pride organizing but it certainly has been there in response to the student encampments, and Palestine Solidarity marches and other actions, including direct actions. At the official Montreal Pride Parade sponsored by many corporations and banks directly involved in genocide there was a visible pro-Palestine contingent. These struggles and initiatives demonstrated various terrains, compositions and relations of struggle that we must recognise, learn from, and build upon.
Pride Toronto (PT) as I detail in my letter of resignation [19] refused to respond to the call from Queers In Palestine and is actively involved in complicity in genocide in a number of ways including through their biggest sponsor TD Bank’s support for General Dynamics. On August 15th it was announced that through US arms sales to Israel that this same General Dynamics in Quebec was shipping materials to the Israeli genocidal war machine. An examination of the sponsor and contingent list for 2024 Pride Toronto shows the major list of corporate and state sponsors and contingents and floats that existed in this year’s PT Parade, many directly involved in the genocide against Palestinians as well as a decrease in community groups from a number of years ago. What started as a struggle raised by members of Pride Toronto within PT to get it to support the demands of Queers In Palestine moved far beyond the PT membership when the PT leadership refused to even discuss this.
Two days before the PT parade the mobilized composition of struggle meant that PT lost control over the Trans march and it became a Trans Palestine Solidarity march of thousands. Palestine solidarity chants were heard all throughout the march. At the same time as the PT parade the Palestine Solidarity No Pride in Genocide! Abolitionist Pride march of more than 2,000 people took place which was supported by groups like Q4P, Faculty4Palestine, Samidoun, Jews Say No to Genocide, SURJ-Toronto, Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction, Toronto Families for Palestine, LGBT Youth Line, CUPE Ontario, Health Alliance for Palestine, Queer Ontario, ,Butterfly and OPSEU[20].It was clearer than ever that thousands of queer and trans people no longer wish to attend PT events especially when more than 1,000 people came back to Grange Park after the march to hear speakers and poets, eat and to celebrate Abolitionist Pride. The march had two Palestinian speakers and CUPE Ontario had a speaker who spoke strongly in support of the BDS campaign. The Abolitionist Pride March showed strong support for Land Back and Indigenous struggles and BDS in a very active way including when we stopped in protest outside the RBC office at Dundas and University.
While other groups across ‘Canada’ were able to address many of these kinds of concerns because of greater community influence PT as mentioned refused to even discuss these questions given its links with TD Bank, many corporate sponsors, and the ‘Canadian’ state .I was very glad to hear about the CUPE Ontario, OPSEU and other union contingents in the Pride Toronto parade who raised support for Palestine and for BDS. At the same time this did little to actively oppose the participation of corporations, banks and groups supporting genocide who were in the very same parade.
This is why whatever small criticisms I have of the Coalition Against Pinkwashing (CAP) action on June 30th 2024 I fully support what they did in rather rushed and constrained circumstances to stop the PT Parade including the pro-genocide contingents from the US Consulate and Amazon. Groups cited on their lead banner,”Pride Partners With Genocide” made BDS very concrete as they opposed TD Bank, Scotia Bank, RBC, Amazon, Google and the Zionist group the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)[21]. The support of Queer and Trans Palestinian Action for Liberation (QTPAL)[22] for CAP was crucial. CAP involved not only QTPAL, but queer members of the People’s Circle for Palestine (the U.of T encampment), members of Q4P and queer members of neighborhood Palestine Solidarity groups. Rather than negotiating with CAP about the important demands they raised PT decided to cancel the rest of the parade.
CAP’s direct action captured a great deal of attention for Palestine Solidarity and the BDS campaign, including in broader activist circles and in the mainstream and social media, including the well attended media conference CAP organized the following day[23] While many were disturbed that Pride Toronto cancelled the rest of the parade it did not produce the overt white gay men’s anti-Black racism generated in response to BLM-TO stopping the parade in 2016. Many of those disturbed by CAP’s action also pointed out that Palestine was an important question that needed to be addressed. The action amplified queer and trans Palestine solidarity activism. It made Zionist influence in the Pride Parade visible by naming CIJA while actively undermining it It also made it clearer who the BDS targets were for organizing in the PT parade Unfortunately PT is still avoiding having pubic discussions and negotiations with CAP.
The diversity of tactics in the PT social relations of struggle this year included not only the CAP action, but also Abolitionist Pride, the pro-Palestine union contingents and the street teams against Pinkwashing and for BDS that Q4P organized at a number of PT events, including the Trans and Dyke marches. .
PT became a site of struggle this year for gaining support for BDS. Without Abolitionist Pride and CAP’s direct action ‘disruption’ of the parade engagement in this terrain of struggle could have unfortunately meant providing support for PT and its Pride in Genocide perspective. CAP in focussing attention on the banks and corporations involved in genocide made BDS clearer for many people and put material pressure on some of these sponsors. This also provided support for those in other centres trying to make Pride into Palestine solidarity actions in St.John’s, Fredericton, Charlottetown, Edmonton, Sudbury, Hamilton, Halifax and Ottawa. These struggles continue!
August 20, 2024
Gary Kinsman is a queer, anti-capitalist, abolitionist activist. He is involved in Abolitionist Pride, the No Pride in Policing Coalition, and Queers4Palestine – Toronto. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire Queer Histories, Queer Struggles (2024) and co-author of The Canadian War on Queers National Security as Sexual Regulation (2010). His/their website is Radical Noise..
Notes
[1] Gary Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire: Queer Histories, Queer Struggles, Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2024, 312-314. Also at: https://www.concordia.ca/press/regulationofdesire.html
[2] On the We Demand demonstration against the limitations of the 1969 Criminal Code Reform see Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2010, 255-270.
[3]. See Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire, 2024, 217-218, 256-259, and Gary Kinsman, “Fuck You 52!: Some Notes Towards a Radical History of Toronto Pride 1981,” Radical Noise, June 7, 2021 at http://radicalnoise.ca/2021/06/07/%ef%bb%bffuck-you-52-some-notes-towards-a-radical-history-of-toronto-pride-1981/
[4] Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire, 2024, 312-314.
[5] See jasbir puar, Terrorist Assemblages Homonationalism in Queer Times, Durham, N.C. Duke University Press, 2017, and OmiSoore Dryden and Suzanne Lenon. Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalism and the Politics of Belonging, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2025.
[6] See Patrizia Gentile and Gary Kinsman, “National Security and Homonationalism The QuAIA Wars and the Making of the Neoliberal Queer,” in Dryden and Lenon, Disrupting Queer Inclusion, 133-149. .
[7] See Elise Thorburn and Gary Kinsman, “Navigating Contemporary Struggles, Class Composition and Social Reproduction,” in Robert Latham et al. ed, Challenging the Right, Augmenting the Left Recasting Leftist Imagination, Halifax Fernwood Publishing, 2020: 86-97; Gary Kinsman, “Mapping Social Relations of Struggle Activism, Ethnography, Social Organization.” in Frampton, Kinsman, Thompson and Tilleczek, ed., Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements/Social Research, Halifax Fernwood, 2006, 133-156, and Gary Kinsman, “Direct Action as Political Activist Ethnography Activist Research in the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty,” in, Bissallon, Doll, Walby, ed., Political Activist Ethnography Studies in the Social Relations of Struggle, Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2024 39-64 and at https://read.aupress.ca/projects/political-activist-ethnography
[8] On the BDS campaign see Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire, 358-359 and Omar Barghouti. Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, Chicago Haymarket books, 2011
[9] A Liberatory Demand from Queers In Palestine at https://queersinpalestine.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/08/87/
[10] See Gary Kinsman The Regulation of Desire, 2024.
[11] On the Palestinian initiated and led BDS movement see https://bdsmovement.net/
[12]. On BLM-TO see Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire, 2024 xxxv-xxxvii 359-362 and on QuAIA, pp. 356-359.
[13] On QuAIA also see Gentile and Kinsman, “National Security and Homonationalism The QuAIA Wars and the Making of the Neoliberal Queer,” in Dryden and Lenon, Disrupting Queer Inclusion, 133-149.
[14] See Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire,2024, xxxvi.
[15] See Kevin Maimann, “’Opposition and Rage,” queer groups challenge Pride to divest from Israel,” The Breach, June 7, 2024, at https://breachmedia.ca/opposition-and-rage-queer-groups-challenge-pride-to-divest-from-israel/
.[16] See Rhea Rollman, “Atlantic Pride Groups lead the way in Palestine Solidarity,” The Independent, July 2, 2024 at https://theindependent.ca/news/atlantic-pride-groups-lead-the-way-in-palestine-solidarity/
[17] Capital Pride Statement in Solidarity with Palestine, August 6, 2024, at https://capitalpride.ca/capital-pride-statement-in-solidarity-with-palestine/
[18] .Judy Haiven, “The New Chutzpah: Cancelling Palestinian Solidarity in Canada,” The Bullet. August 18, 2024 at https://socialistproject.ca/new-chutzpah-canceling-palestinian-solidarity/#more
[19] Gary Kinsman, “Letter of Resignation From Pride Toronto, The Struggle Continues!” Radical Noise, April 21, 2024 at http://radicalnoise.ca/2024/04/21/gary-kinsman-letter-of-resignation-from-pride-toronto-the-struggle-continues/
[20] No Pride in Policing Coalition, “From Tkaronto to Palestine and Beyond Abolitionist Pride 2024, at https://www.noprideinpolicing.ca/events/abolitionist-pride-2024-statement/ and https://www.noprideinpolicing.ca/
[21]. On CAP see https://www.instagram.com/wawog_to/p/C892H_Tg4AG/?img_index=1
Also see Richie Assaly, “Pinkwashing explained: How Israel leverages gay rights to put a ‘progressive veneer atop atrocity’,” Richochet, July 5, 2024, at https://ricochet.media/international/how-israel-leverages-gay-rights-to-put-a-progressive-veneer-atop-atrocity/
[22] Queer and Trans Palestinian Action for Liberation (QTPAL) support for the Coalition Against Pinkwashing at https://www.instagram.com/uoftalums4palestine/p/C85m1yhtw2I/?img_index=1