We forgot Black Lives Matter at Canada’s 1st Pride. Let’s never repeat that mistake. HuffPostPersonal
I would have been arrested that night. I would have been at one of the four gay bathhouses that, where 300 men were rounded up and, in some cases, beaten, photographed naked and humiliated. Normally, those were wonderful places to be in, and I was a regular patron. I knew the owners. I supported their operations full time. So on any other night, you’d have found me at the bathhouses. But on February 5, 1981, I wasn’t there.
This was how Pride in Toronto began: as a demonstration of anger against the police. I worry that many young white queer people have forgotten these roots and that, to them, Pride is just a celebration. Itthat, but we must remember the point of the whole thing: to stand up against homophobia, transphobia, racism, and to show we will not tolerate any form of oppression.
When my oven timer went off, I ran home from Buddies. I took my cheesecakes out of the oven. I let them sit. Then, that night, I went to the demonstration at Yonge and Wellesley.We took over the streets. Thousands of people showed up, and it wasn’t just queer people. Anyone in the city of Toronto who had any kind of political savvy realized what the police had done: they were trying to slap us back into the closet.
There was never any question of getting involved or not. Cops were destroying our communities and arresting our friends. Suddenly, people who had never been politically active were being arrested in the bathhouses, or seeing their friends get arrested, and they decided that if they didn’t do anything to stop it, we would all be sunk.
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