In or Out?
The organizers of Pride have until June 14 to ban a controversial group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from this year’s parade — or the city will look at withdrawing all funding to the annual gay celebration this year.
The motion — put forward by mayoralty candidate Giorgio Mammoliti at Wednesday’s council meeting — calls for the Pride committee to prove to the city’s general manager of economic development prior to June 14 that it has received and rejected an application from QuAIA.
Otherwise, the June executive committee will consider revoking all funding directed to Pride this year.
“If they (the Pride executive) don’t reject the application then I’m confident City Hall will ban all resources from the parade,” said Mammoliti. “This is their last chance to get it right.”
Last year the city awarded Pride a $121,380 cultural grant and a $5,000 access, equity and human rights grant. The city also regularly contributes in-kind cleanup, transportation and policing resources — which amounts to more the $170,000 per year.
Mammoliti’s motion could have passed Wednesday had he got the two-thirds vote needed procedurally to override referral to the June 14 executive committee.
The vote was 21-24 with Mayor David Miller and his cabal of union-friendly socialists all opting not to deal with the issue until next month.
Mammoliti says those who voted to defer the issue “have not been listening” to the divide that’s gone on with respect to QuAIA — adding there may be councillors who “actually agree” with the anti-Israel messaging.
He suggested some of his council colleagues have strong ties to CUPE, which is said to be behind QuAIA.
“This is hatred any way you look at it ... they’re spreading hatred towards Israel,” Mammoliti said.
Pride executive director Tracey Sandilands and board co-chair Genevieve D’Iorio could not be reached for comment.
However in an interview Monday with the Toronto Sun, Sandilands said they wanted to see if they got an application from QuAIA before commenting on whether they’d be allowed to march this year. QuAIA directed me to their website which stated they intend to march in Pride Toronto 2010 and “will not back down in the face of threats and intimidation.”
Lawyer Martin Gladstone, who brought the existence of QuAIA to light with his video Reclaiming Our Pride, said he was “thrilled” with the support at council.
In his 58-minute video, Gladstone provides footage from the 2009 parade in which 200 QuAIA marchers carry anti-Israel signs, while marchers angrily chant “Fist by Fist, Blow by Blow, Apartheid State, Has Got to Go” and at least one parade marcher is decked out in a shirt featuring a crossed-out swastika.
He said councillors are starting to recognize how “insidious” this problem is and QuAIA has no place in a parade celebrating gay rights.
He said he hopes the Pride organizers will take this last opportunity to do “the right thing.”
Avi Benlolo, president of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, said he’s happy the whole issue is under review at council.
But he added he’s not at all confident Pride will do the right thing.
“(Nevertheless) we should give them a chance to rethink their views,” Benlolo said, adding CUPE is “empowering and enabling” the anti-Israel contingent.
I remain skeptical like Benlolo.
The fact Pride has to be threatened with the city’s purse-strings to do the right thing absolutely floors me.
If they’d dealt with this issue before it blew up in their faces, perhaps we wouldn’t be hearing from those who don’t feel the parade should get public money at all.
And there have been several.
In other words, the Pride organizers are the creatures of their own misfortune — and now the issue won’t go away until they deal with it.
“There are those of us who won’t give up,” says Mammoliti. “If Pride accepts the group we won’t be giving them any resources.”
