This is a complaint under the Pride Toronto Dispute Resolution Process. The respondent is Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM), which lists its contact information as:
info@BlackLivesMatterTO.CA
Sandy Hudson, (416) 722-8842; Rodney Diverlus, (647) 456-8476
Black Lives Matter Toronto
Box 30315, York Lanes
North York, ON M3J 2C1
I ask for sanctions against BLM for the following offences.
Black Lives Matter Toronto is not a domestic terrorist group. I can say that definitively because they haven’t been charged with such offences, let alone convicted. Nonetheless, BLM used the tools and tactics of domestic terrorists and caused physical harm to Pride spectators. By any rational definition, Black Lives Matter committed violence against Pride participants and spectators. (“Violence” means infliction of physical harm, not disagreement or political dissent.)
All of us involved in Pride spent excruciating years arriving at rules and regulations concerning “messaging” at Pride parades and marches. As they stand, Pride Toronto’s terms and conditions state (errors in original):
Messaging in the Parade or March
The Applicant will not present any messages – verbal, written, in imagery or otherwise – that promotes or condones violence or the incitement of hatred as defined in the Criminal Code of Canada.
The Applicant will respect the right of all members and supporters of our communities to participate in Pride 2016.
The Applicant agrees that all messages delivered during the participation in the Parade and March will remain nonviolent and in accordance with the guidelines above, the City of Toronto’s Anti-Discrimination Policy and Pride Toronto’s Freedom of Expression policy.
The Applicant will tailor their messaging to be in accordance with: The theme of the Pride 2016 festival, or Pride’s International Grand Marshal or Human Rights program, or solidarity with the communities.
Black Lives Matter Toronto’s “messaging,” through its actions, failed to live up the required standard of nonviolence.
Pride Toronto’s Rules of Parade Engagement (ROPEs) state: “The use of pyrotechnics and open flame [is] strictly prohibited.” It is not in dispute that, at the Pride Parade on 2016.07.03, Black Lives Matter set off rainbow smoke bombs at the corner of Yonge and Carlton Sts. Smoke bombs (or smoke grenades) are pyrotechnics and are banned.
Black Lives Matter Toronto spokesman Janaya Khan uses a photo of the exploded smoke bombs as a background image on her own blog, specifically at the posting with the possibly optimistic title “The Conditions of a Race War” (2016.07.13).
The image is set not to print in the site’s CSS. It is called by an inline style in a SECTION element (emphasis added):
section
class="site-hero site-hero-featured-image"
style="background-image:url(http://i2.wp.com/janayakhan.com/
wp-content/uploads/2016/07/
color.jpg?resize=885%2C516)"
color.jpg is this photograph:
That should be definitive enough, but in case there is a pretence of doubt, news photographers captured the smoke bombs. (Some images resized.)
Ethan Eisenberg (Now, 2016.07.11):
Roberto Machado Noa, Getty Images (544688492; 544688596):
Torstar News Service article (syndicated; this version from Metro, 2016.07.03):
After the rainbow-coloured cloud cleared from smoke bombs set off in the intersection, some paradegoers joined in the chants of “Black lives, they matter here!” while others shouted for the protest to move on.
These smoke bombs weren’t just against the rules, which in itself is reason to ban BLM from Pride parades and marches. They caused physical harm to spectators. Photographic evidence:
Roberto Machado Noa, Getty Images:
AP Images (originally Mark Blinch, CP):
Spectators cover their faces after colo[u]rful smoke grenades were set off by members of the Black Lives Matters movement at the annual Pride Parade in Toronto on Sunday, July 3, 2016.
“Strictly prohibited” means “strictly prohibited.” It is intolerable that any participant in a Pride parade or march would dare to suffuse the immediate area with smoke and force bystanders to choke. You don’t get to do that because you’re the honoured group, nor because you’re black (“South Asian”; “indigenous”; “Palestinian”), nor because you are convinced your cause is just, nor, least of all, because you can avail yourself of the ready-made cudgel of labelling as racist any critic such an abominable action.
But that isn’t the only physical injury to spectators that Black Lives Matter Toronto caused.
BLM stopped the Pride parade in its tracks for roughly half an hour. While spectators expect to stand around in the heat, spectators can also leave at will; moreover, there are accessible viewing areas where persons who know they are susceptible to heat can sit. No such options exist for Parade participants, who are penned in on barricaded city streets with no shelter and no viable means of exit.
This means that everyone in the parade who was situated behind the BLM float, and everyone in staging areas who would otherwise have begun marching during the sit-in, were effectively frozen in place to bake under the hot sun.
Witnesses attest to physical distress caused by this sun and heat exposure.
Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun, 2016.07.03:
It certainly didn’t matter to them that while they parked their posteriors at the corner of Yonge and College Sts for a 30-minute protest... thousands of revellers and marchers in support of gay rights and gay pride were left to stand in the blazing heat waiting for the parade to recommence.
It wouldn’t have mattered to them that former Stephen Harper cabinet minister Lisa Raitt – who was squeezed into a small section of Bloor St. while waiting to march along with all of the 120 members of the LGBTory group – fainted in the heat.... [o]r that they put countless other elderly and disabled people at risk while they presented their list of demands to the Pride organizers.
James Dubro, Facebook, 2016.07.03 20:15: “I think BLM were pushing it today with stopping parade for a long time as most of us marchers baked in the hot sun[.]”
Doug Elliott, interview, AM 640 radio, 2016.07.04 (transcript):
But instead, they decided that they were going to selfishly take over. I can tell you, I was standing there. I was nearly passing out from the heat. There were little kids who had to leave the parade. There were old people who were fainting. There were, uh, handicapped people who were roasting.
The only response from Black Lives Matter Toronto was on Twitter (2016.07.04; excerpted):
The community & allies supported our actions. 2 those who felt inconvenienced, be better.
Actual physical distress and fainting represent mere “inconvenience” as far as BLM is concerned.
Black Lives Matter Toronto is the first violent protestor ever to insinuate itself into the Pride parade and richly deserves the severest punishment possible under this Process.
Black Lives Matter Toronto, which lectures Pride Toronto on the latter’s purported “anti-blackness,” carried out actual discrimination, lied in its application to Pride Toronto about its antidiscrimination policies, and induced Pride Toronto to violate the Ontario Human Rights Code. Further, Black Lives Matter Toronto promulgated hate speech.
Pride Toronto’s terms and conditions, at ¶3, require (random caps in original):
The Applicant hereby declares that policies upholding equal opportunity and non-discrimination have been adopted, by which discrimination on the grounds of Race, Colour, Creed, National Origin, Religious or Political affiliation, Sex, Age, Personal or Family Relationships, Disabilities, HIV/AIDS, Income Restrictions, Union Affiliation, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression is prohibited by the organization/business or individual.
Arguably not a single group that ever participated in a Pride parade or march met this criterion, and no “individual” possibly could. An organization would have to have such a policy in place before the application form is signed. BLM never had such an antidiscrimination policy in place. Nor could or would it set up such a policy, because that policy would ban unequal treatment of whites, Caucasians, and Europeans.
Pride’s terms and conditions advise that “a failure to honour the Parade and March Undertaking or comply with Pride Toronto’s rules could result in penalties, including the person or group’s exclusion from future Parades or Marches.” Filing a false declaration, especially on an issue of fundamental human rights, is enough to warrant exclusion on its own merits.
The Dispute Resolution Process explanatory document, which doesn’t have a title beyond “Pride Toronto Dispute Resolution Process,” states:
The Dispute Resolution Process (DRP) will only consider complaints about the participation or exclusion of a group in the Pride parade or march. The objective of the DRP is to resolve, correct and remedy behaviours that are contrary to Policy, to ensure fair application of the rules for Parade and march participation, and to ensure compliance with those rules and applicable legislation. [...]
Complaints that require Board and membership consideration or approval (for example, changing the mission or mandate of Pride Toronto) will not be considered through the Dispute Resolution Process. Although the DRP may recommend Pride Toronto review its governing documents including those that require membership approval, the DRP does not have jurisdiction to change any of the rules, policies, or governing principles of Pride Toronto.
The DRP does, however, have jurisdiction to consider any and all supporting evidence of a participant’s refusal to abide by Pride’s terms and conditions. The Arbitration Act calls the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, which, at §15, notes that “a tribunal may admit as evidence... any document or other thing”; at §16, “[a] tribunal may... take notice of facts that may be judicially noticed.”
In this context, Black Lives Matter Toronto’s other discriminatory actions at the Pride Festival are relevant indicators of intent and should be considered under this Process.
BLM admitted that, on 2016.07.02, it refused to sell a T‑shirt to a white person, or, in its Orwellian euphemism, someone who is not black-identified.
Sima XYN: “Tried to buy a shirt & make a donation. I was refused service at the [Black Lives Matter] booth at Pride Toronto because I’m white[.]”
BLM: “As our volunteer told you, our movement shirts are for Black-identified folks. Since you seem interested in making a donation, you are more than welcome to inquire about those options.”
“I tried to make a donation yesterday at your booth and was sent away because I am not black.”
This action is a clear violation of the Human Rights Code by refusing to provide goods or services on the basis of colour, race, ethnic origin, and ancestry. It violates Pride’s terms and conditions on the grounds of race, colour, and national origin. The action took place during the Pride Festival, hence is encompassed by this Process.
Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter gives away T‑shirts to black people: “Black folks who march will get a free T-shirt.”
Black Lives Matter notoriously issued demands to Pride Toronto, two of which induce Pride Toronto to violate the Ontario Human Rights Code (caps in original):
In effect, BLM demands that Pride Toronto implement affirmative action in hiring – in favour of “Black trans women” first and foremost (but not, say, “Black trans men”). It induces Pride Toronto to make discriminatory demands of a service provider, namely Ontario Interpreting Services or other brokers of sign-language interpreters.
Again in the current context, these demands represent impermissible discriminatory intent on the part of Black Lives Matter Toronto. BLM refused to provide a discrimination-free environment, as required by Pride’s terms and conditions and the Human Rights Code. BLM, moreover, in an action more reminiscent of the Symbionese Liberation Army, extorted Pride Toronto’s executive director to sign on to its demands, which include discriminatory hiring provisions.
To excerpt again, Pride Toronto’s terms and conditions state:
The Applicant will not present any messages – verbal, written, in imagery or otherwise – that promotes or condones violence or the incitement of hatred as defined in the Criminal Code of Canada.
The Applicant will respect the right of all members and supporters of our communities to participate in Pride 2016.
The Applicant agrees that all messages delivered during the participation in the Parade and March will remain non-violent and in accordance with the guidelines above, the City of Toronto’s Anti-Discrimination Policy and Pride Toronto’s Freedom of Expression policy.
The Applicant will tailor their messaging to be in accordance with: The theme of the Pride 2016 festival, or Pride’s International Grand Marshal or Human Rights program, or solidarity with the communities.
I heard Khan say, at Yonge and Carlton during the sit-in at the Trans March (2016.07.01), that the Orlando Pulse massacre of over 40 gay men and others was due to “toxic masculinity.” She was further quoted as saying the cause was “white supremacy.”
The actual event happened as follows: An American-born Afghan Muslim murdered 49 people, most of them gay men. Afghans may be Caucasian (or Aryan in the aboriginal sense of the term), but they aren’t “white.” By assailing “toxic masculinity” and “white supremacy,” Black Lives Matter Toronto incited hatred against a constellation of groups that black “queer and trans” agitators would consider the enemy but who have an absolute legal right to enjoy Pride without defamation. Those groups are men, including masculine men, and whites.
These statements, moreover, failed to meet the required standard of being “tailor[ed]” to the theme of the festival, any human-rights program, or solidarity with any communities that aren’t black, “queer or trans,” South Asian, indigenous, or Palestinian. Khan’s statements incite hatred against two groups she, and BLM as a group, surely believe warrant such hatred, namely men and whites and above all masculine white men.
BLM’s primary demand was this one: “Removal of police floats in the Pride marches/parades.”
Pride Toronto’s terms and conditions, already cited above, contractually require all participants to avail themselves of the Dispute Resolution Process if they have any objections to parade or march participants. That is the only recourse for anyone with such an objection.
Instead of following the rules everyone else has to abide by, Black Lives Matter Toronto stopped the Pride parade under blazing sun, set off smoke bombs, induced heat distress among onlookers and participants, and extorted Pride Toronto to “agree” to its demands, including “Removal of police floats in the Pride marches/parades.”
As such, BLM has violated Pride’s terms and conditions by seeking to extrajudicially ban not just a participant but an entire class of participants. This Process must take note that Pride Toronto’s antidiscrimination policies explicitly ban discrimination on the basis of creed, religious or political affiliation, and union affiliation. It must further read into Pride’s terms and conditions a ban on discrimination based on professional or occupational affiliation.
Black Lives Matter Toronto has proven that it is unwilling to play by the same rules everybody else does. I have listed a raft of violations, each of which could and should incur a penalty for Black Lives Matter Toronto. The specificity of each of them makes it tempting for an allegedly “impartial” process like this one to rubber-stamp de facto acquittals on each count.
So let’s look at the big picture. Even there, Black Lives Matter Toronto has violated Pride rules and deserves punishment. And the big picture is simple: Black Lives Matter Toronto has nothing but contempt for Pride Toronto, and the gay community, even after Pride Toronto made BLM its honoured group.
Pride Toronto’s letters patent (1995.11.30) state that its objects are “staging in the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto an annual celebration and informational, educational and cultural festival by and for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgenderal people of their sexual and gender orientation and identities, and their histories, cultures, communities, organizations, relationships, achievements and lives.” It says nothing about race.
The purpose of Pride parades and marches is listed (in its terms and conditions) as “a celebration of our communities.” A participant must “operate in a manner consistent with the celebration of Pride and the positive value of diversity and identity in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, 2-spirited, Pansexual, and Asexual communities” (caps in original).
Setting asexuals aside, as they should be, the purposes here emphasize celebration and positivity. Black Lives Matter Toronto “celebrates” nothing and isn’t “positive” about anything. Black Lives Matter Toronto spits in the face of Pride, and especially of its core, irreducible constituency, gay men and lesbians, whom it falsely models as white and racist.
Black Lives Matter chapters, including Toronto’s, have irrefutable complaints about police brutality, about differential or discriminatory policing (in the Toronto context, carding), and, at some level, about systemic racism. None of that has anything to do with gay pride. To participate in Pride parades or marches, you and your group are required to stay on topic. Black Lives Matter Toronto tries to change the subject and calls you a white supremacist if you object.
“Pride is political” is an asinine and hollow catchphrase that, taken to extremes, justifies any action by anyone during a Pride parade or march. Nonwhite gays and lesbians (in BLM’s argot, “queer and trans” people) never let white gays and lesbians forget for an instant that the former groups’ racial identities cannot be separated from their sexualities. White gays and lesbians are constantly reminded how racist they are for suggesting that – even when it didn’t occur to them in the first place.
But if those identities are unitary and indivisible, they’re indivisible in all directions. That means if you show up at a “queer and trans” event to protest anti-blackness, you have to show up at a black event to protest homophobia (“and transphobia”). I’m talking about the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, which everyone still calls Caribana.
“Queer and trans” black activists will react nearly with violence if you suggest that blacks are homophobic, or that any black person has ever been homophobic even once. (White homophobia is always worse.) That’s their cover story for the indefensible hypocrisy of protesting Gay Pride, where they were honoured guests, but not protesting “their own” Caribbean march.
The fact remains that Canada is a paradise on earth for gay men and lesbians. Toronto’s gay and lesbian community is the biggest in this free country and is whatever gay men and lesbians want it to be. Gay and lesbian Toronto is so free, so fair-minded, so overwhelmed with concern for minority interests that it puts grievance-cherishing malcontents at the head of its pride parade.
Black Lives Matter Toronto knows that if it pulled the same stunt with Caribana that it did with Pride it would get the shit kicked out of it by attendees. Gays and lesbians, being nonviolent, have recourse to civilized means like dispute-resolution processes.
Black Lives Matter Toronto’s members may get hassled by cops and security guards. Some outside their group might not greet them with the regal supplication they seem to expect. But BLM’s contention that Pride Toronto and the Toronto gay and lesbian community are hotbeds of racism is absurd. To state as much is to lie to gay men and lesbians’ faces. To insist on that point is to change the subject, to air grievances in a forum where, in fact, Black Lives Matter Toronto was treated with regal supplication.
When you’re the honoured group at a gay-pride march, yes, in fact, you really are contractually obligated to celebrate that community and demonstrate positivity toward it. Black Lives Matter Toronto did the opposite and deserves the severest punishment for it.
The rules, such as they are, list the following as “Complaint Resolution Request Options” (punctuation and capitalization sic):
A request for Corrective Action (when not seeking a penalty and within Pride Toronto’s authority) – this process is outside of the Dispute Resolution process.
A request for Mediation – between the complainant(s) and other parade or march participant(s) in an effort to resolve the complaint. The goal of mediation is to come to a workable solution that leaves both sides in agreement with the resolution.
A request for Arbitration – which seeks an independent review of the approval or exclusion of participants in the parade or march, or an alleged violation of the rules and policies governing participation in the parade or march.
A complainant may request to start at step one and proceed through the steps, or go directly to Arbitration.
The DRP complaint form offers only the latter two as “options.” I opt for all three, to begin, as the rules allow, “at step one and proceed through the steps.” This will force Pride Toronto to confront a decision it won’t want to make (banning Black Lives Matter, thereby seeming racist). It will force executive director Mathieu Chantelois, an unprincipled striver who cannot even pronounce “Black Lives Matter,” to face his real legacy: Banning Black Lives Matter Toronto.
And, after Chantelois refuses to do that, Black Lives Matter will be forced to sit in the same room with me and defend itself.
Then, after that fails, an adjudicator who doesn’t want to be the bad guy who banned Black Lives Matter Toronto (see below) will have to countenance doing just that.
So to say the same thing again, I want all three steps engaged, one after another, until I get what I want.
I have previously contended, in a complaint against Queers Against Israeli Apartheid under this process, that the adjudicator in question would suffer social ostracism if she were the big bad wolf who banned QuAIA from Pride. Essentially, they’d never eat lunch in this town again. Social ostracism remains a live issue in the selection of arbitrators and adjudicators.
The Arbitration Act governs these proceedings. It holds, at §11:
Duty of arbitrator
11. (1) An arbitrator shall be independent of the parties and shall act impartially.
Disclosure before accepting appointment
(2) Before accepting an appointment as arbitrator, a person shall disclose to all parties to the arbitration any circumstances of which he or she is aware that may give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias.
Any arbitrator and adjudicator would have an irreconcilable bias, and not merely an apprehension of same, if he or she “identified as” or actually were any or all of the following.
Terms used by Black Lives Matter to describe its actually gay or lesbian (also transgender) members
BLM protests “anti-blackness”; any black or white adjudicator is presumptively biased
Despite the fact that aboriginals and Palestinians are not black, and that black South Asians are mixed-race if and when they exist at all, BLM arrogates the right to speak for those groups. Rinaldo Walcott, Black Lives Matter Toronto press conference transcript, 2016.07.07 (interruption elided):
And there’s no Pride that can be legitimately represent queer people if questions of black lives, black oppression are not central to it, if the question of Palestinian liberation is not central to it, if the question for indigenous justice and decolonization is not central to it[.]
Any South Asian, aboriginal, or Palestinian adjudicator is presumptively biased
Hence I want an arbitrator or adjudicator who isn’t any of the above.
I further demand an arbitrator or adjudicator who does not have any social standing in the demimondes where Pride Toronto or Black Lives Matter Toronto members circulate. I want an arbitrator or adjudicator with no nexus to either organization. I make that demand so that the arbitrator or adjudicator can fearlessly rule on the merits of this complaint without worrying, consciously or not, about social ostracism or retribution, or merely being afraid of getting called a racist on Twitter.
Arbitrators and adjudicators who previously worked on any DRP file are also banned, very much including Martha McCarthy and Paul Bent.
I want Black Lives Matter Toronto and everyone involved with it, including Janaya Khan, Sandy Hudson, Rodney Diverlus, Alexandra Williams, and Rinaldo Walcott, banned from all Pride parades and marches for two years. I want those individuals banned by name so they cannot carry out their mischief and subversion under other auspices.
If one or more other complaints under the DRP impinge on topics substantially similar topics to this complaint’s topics, the Process must combine those complaints rather than cherry-picking the weakest one, dismissing it, then ruling the rest of the complaints invalid under a misapplication of the principle or res judicata. (That’s what the Dispute Resolution Process, ostensibly “impartial,” did with QuAIA; see below.)
The Dispute Resolution Process has a chequered past.
A previous adjudicator went out of her way to make sure the most favoured “queer” group in Toronto history, QuAIA, would not get banned from Pride. Black Lives Matter Toronto is the new most favoured “queer” group and I fully expect the entire Pride organization and the Dispute Resolution Process to carve out custom exceptions for BLM, to excuse and retroactively endorse its actions, and to appease it without limit.
The first chair of the DRP, Doug Elliott, resigned without telling anyone.
Pride Toronto extrajudicially banned a teeny tiny men’s group, the Canadian Association for Equality, on the basis of “feelings” from unnamed complainants. Feelings are no basis for abrogation of rights to participate in a public event. The adjudicator there did so without a hearing, a mere four days before the Pride parade, and on the basis of complaints filed after the mandated deadline. The reprehensible fact is CAFE is the only group ever banned from Pride under this process.
The DRP simply ignored my complaint against Pride’s chief sponsor, TD, presumably because the two parties involved were me and TD.
I am under no illusions as to the outcome of this complaint. Really, there are only two: It will get ignored or it will get dismissed without a hearing. Because that’s what happens with the DRP.
I suppose there’s another outcome. Since Black Lives Matter Toronto is the new black, as it were, i.e., is the untouchable “queer” agitator faction de l’instant, the DRP will fall all over itself to rubber-stamp endless future years of BLM’s disruption, subversion, and mayhem. Because to do otherwise would be white supremacist and/or racist, wouldn’t it?
Yet to endorse Black Lives Matters Toronto’s actions in 2016 is to give it unfettered licence to do whatever it wants forever. I have the naïve expectation of justice and due process in preventing that outcome.
Posted: 2016.07.30