#blmto

One of the most depressing realities to be made clear by the entire backlash to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest at the Toronto Pride Parade this past weekend is just how many white people are simply clueless as to the continuing day-to-day actuality of systemic racism in our society.

As always seems to be the case when racialized and marginalized communities stand up for their rights in any visible way whatsoever, an endless stream of facile and specious narratives arise based around logically false equivalencies or simple stupidities which are used as a cover for what amounts to racism

One might note that the BLM protest was entirely peaceful and stopped the Pride parade for all of 30 minutes. Based on some of the reaction you would have thought it was a terrorist attack!

I already wrote about some of the absurd and offensive responses from the usual reactionary suspects like the odious Margaret Wente and the Toronto Sun's in-house political simpleton  Joe Warmington.

BLM Toronto co-founder Janaya Khan wrote powerfully and movingly of how BLM in Toronto is very much a part of the broader LGBT movement which is what made the time and place of their action totally appropriate. as well as about the awful and viciously racist backlash they faced.

Khan also pointed briefly to one of the most absurd narratives to flow out of the whole affair -- that being the notion that preventing a police float from being in the march would somehow be "exclusionary" or "discriminatory".

The high school logic class false sanctimony at play here runs along the sad old liberal lines of "Pride is supposed to inclusive and not letting the police march is not inclusive" which sounds good if you forget we are in a society with a history and a legacy of racism and if you somehow pretend the police are a group that can be discriminated against.

Which they cannot be. It is even more stupid than the usual cries of "reverse racism" or moronic nonsense like trying to claim that anti-Islamic bigotry is not racist because "Islam is not a race".

Gay cops can write all the plaintive letters they want, but the police are not a racialized or marginalized group or even a social group at all that can be "discriminated" against anymore than dentists or engineers can be "discriminated" against. The entire construct of attempting to claim this is idiotic.

The police are the paid, armed wing of the state, along with the military. As the paid, armed wing of a racist and colonialist, homophobic and misogynist society historically the police have reflected this in their practice.

They have both historically and in the here-and-now been racist, colonialist, homophobic and misogynist.

That they have been forced to include (and they were forced, make no mistake) members of groups that have suffered under the yoke of these systemic injustices changes nothing. That specific officers may not be racist also changes nothing, in the same way that specific white people not being racist changes nothing about systemic racism.

Just as "All Lives Matter" is obliviously racist as a slogan, "Blue Lives Matter" is even more so. There are no lives that matter more to the state than "blue lives" as is clearly seen across North America as time-after-time obvious and egregious cases of racist or other murders or brutalization by police officers go almost entirely unpunished. Any type of action against or conviction of police officers in even the most obscene instances are almost unheard of.

In fact, as we just saw in the wake of the G20 Toronto police riot, the police can violate the civil rights of thousands of people publicly and openly with almost no consequence at all.

And everyone knows this so lets cut the bullshit.

The police have served to enforce discrimination and inequality and they have far from turned the page on this with their members, chiefs and officers continuing to support and extol practices like carding that have been demonstrated to be racist.

Until the police unions, membership and leadership have actually disavowed these ugly and vile practices and demonstrated that they are actually committed to a non-discriminatory kind of policing (and I am not convinced that this is necessarily possible at this moment in history) it is an affront to those groups that they actively oppress daily to think that the police should be partying it up in parades without some who see the actuality of the jackboot questioning this.

When people talk about the virtue of inclusion, if they actually mean what they say the police are an obstacle to that goal and a very active one.

Members of Black Lives Matter Toronto made an appearance at the city's Pride parade despite not being registered to march this year.

The group, while not officially listed on Pride Toronto's list of parade participants, took to the parade route just before the end of the day's festivities with raised fists and posters bearing the words, "May we never again have to shut it down."

Speaking to reporters after the demonstration, co-founder Rodney Diverlus wouldn't say how long the group had been planning to show up.

"I don't think that's relevant," he said.

"Pride is actually ours. Queer and trans people of colour actually started this. We don't need to register for a deadline, we don't need to tell you we're coming, we don't need to pay money for a float. We're just going to take up space," said Diverlus.

The comments follow the group's 30-minute sit-in at last year's parade, in which they demanded that Toronto police floats and booths be barred from future Pride parades and community events. Their demands also included a commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staff and to better support Black events during Pride.

Banned from marching in uniform in this year's march meanwhile, a group 100 Toronto police officers and union representatives travelled to New York City to participate in that city's parade, at the invitation of the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL).

Speaking to CBC Toronto ahead of the march, the force's own LGBT liaison officer, Const. Danielle Bottineau acknowledged many saw that as a "slap in the face."

On Sunday, Diverlus responded to the move by those members of the Toronto police who decided to march in New York City.

"Our police can't just escape us and [hope] that they're not going to be held accountable. Folks in Black Lives Matter New York reminded Toronto police that no matter where they go Black people will resist them. We know where you are, we know what you've done."

"We are here at Pride 2017 to remind the community, that we are still standing up for the them," the organization tweeted Sunday afternoon, towards the end of the parade.

The rookie Toronto police officer who was just 11 weeks into the job when he became involved in a fatal police shooting expressed a heartfelt apology to family and friends of Andrew Loku, but said if he was presented with the same scenario today he wouldn't do anything differently.

In confident and measured testimony at the coroner’s inquest into Loku’s death Thursday, Const. Haim Queroub described for the first time his involvement in the July 2015 call that ended with Const. Andrew Doyle shooting Loku. At the time, Doyle had been Queroub’s coach officer, a kind of mentoring program for new recruits.

Similar to the account given by Doyle a day earlier, Queroub told jurors there was no other option but to shoot Loku as he advanced on the pair with a hammer. Queroub said Loku first raised the hammer to the height of his shoulder, then above his head and did not respond to the officers shouting at him to drop the weapon — a command known as the police challenge.

“At this point in time, I’m scared for my life. My life is in jeopardy — and not only my life, but my partner’s life and the public,” Queroub said.

Once Loku was between six and eight feet away, Queroub said he put his finger on the trigger “and had begun to squeeze when I heard the gunshots” from Doyle firing.

Unlike Doyle, who said he could not recall if Loku said anything as he walked toward the officers, Queroub said Loku did talk to them, saying: “Whatcha gonna do, come on, shoot me.”

Under questioning about both officers’ failure to attempt any de-escalation tactics instead of using lethal force, Queroub said it simply wasn’t possible. The speed at which Loku was advancing did not allow for him or Doyle to change tactics away from issuing the police challenge and move toward offering help or having only one of the officers communicate with Loku.

Anita Szigeti, the lawyer representing the Empowerment Council, an organization both for and run by people with experience with mental health challenges, asked Queroub if he would do anything differently if the exact same call came in today.

“I would react the same way, ma’am,” he responded.

His death provoked outrage, protests and an ambitious review of police oversight in Ontario.

Now, nearly two years after Andrew Loku was shot by a Toronto police officer, his family, friends and a coalition of rights groups hope a coroner’s inquest will, at last, fill in the missing gaps about Loku’s final moments.

“We had a lot of questions, and we didn’t have any answers about what happened that night,” Kiden Jonathan, a close friend of Loku’s who had been with him hours before he died, said this week.

The long-awaited coroner’s inquest into Loku’s death begins Monday to probe the controversial July 2015 shooting, which occurred in the hallway of an apartment building near Eglinton Ave. W. and Caledonia Rd. The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) leased units inside the building, providing housing for people with mental health challenges.

Coroner’s inquests are not held to assign blame, but to probe the circumstances surrounding a death and generate recommendations to prevent future fatalities. Loku’s inquest is expected to last three weeks and hear from 20 witnesses.

A handful of organizations have asked to participate as parties in the inquest, including the CMHA, the Black Action Defence Committee, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s Empowerment Council, and Across Boundaries, an organization that provides support and services to racialized communities experiencing mental health problems.

Dr. John Carlisle, the coroner presiding over Loku’s inquest, will make a ruling on which parties will get standing on Monday.

Loku, a 45-year-old father of five from South Sudan, was shot twice after police were summoned by a 911 call from a neighbour saying Loku was armed with a hammer and threatening to kill the caller’s friend.

Ontario’s civilian police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), later cleared the unnamed officer who shot Loku, concluding no criminal charge would be laid because the officer believed he needed to stop an imminent, life-threatening hammer attack.

That conclusion ran counter to an eye witness account that Loku did not pose a threat to anyone at the time of his death.

“Andrew died right in front of me. There was no reason for it,” Loku’s neighbour, Robin Hicks, told the Star shortly after the shooting.

The walkout was organized in response to a number of recent incidents against Black students in the school district.

Teachers in Toronto launched a mass walkout Monday, striking to hold a large scale teach-in to protest anti-Black racism in schools.

Organized by the Toronto Chapter of Black Lives Matter, BLMTO, along with the Latinx, Afro-Latin-American, Abya Yala Education Network known as LAEN and Educators for Peace and Justice, the demonstration came as a response to a number of incidents that have occurred recently in Toronto.

Earlier this year, a York region trustee used the N-word to refer to a Black parent, while in April, CBC published an article exposing that 50 percent of students expelled in the last five years from the Toronto District School Board region were Black.

Black students face “humiliating discipline, to suspension and expulsions, to placement in behavioral programs, to disengaging curriculum and pedagogy, to violent incidents at the hands of School Resource officers and other police officers inside schools,” wrote BLMTO in a press release.

Straight, white, cisgender, male politicians in Toronto seem awfully invested in the celebrations and expressions of queer people. For at least the third time in the past seven years, such politicians are threatening to pull funding from Pride Toronto’s annual celebrations.

The latest objection comes from Coun. John Campbell, who says the city should pull its financial support if Pride doesn’t let the Toronto Police march in the annual Sunday parade in their uniforms. Chief Saunders has agreed to the demand, but Campbell sees benefit for himself in continuing the conflict.

Pride is extremely useful to Campbell and other conditionally supportive councillors, so long as it expresses a version of queerness they find comforting and profitable. When Pride expresses its radical political roots — the rejection of police brutality and challenges to state power — many of the council bros no longer see their stake in it. The great value of Pride funding for self-interested councillors is the ability to deny that funding, to control the radical politics of queer people in the name of unity.

It’s highly unlikely a majority of councillors would ever vote to defund Pride, but that isn’t the purpose of Campbell’s motion. He is reminding queer people, particularly Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) and other queer people who successfully demanded an end to ceremonial police participation, that their advocacy has consequences, that the power they are trying to cultivate in their communities is no match for the city’s power.

In threatening to cut Pride, Campbell opens up space for any group that has a grievance or discomfort with Toronto’s queer communities to speak up.

Federal Conservative leadership candidate Brad Trost took his opportunity within hours of Campbell’s suggestion to defund Pride. “I have not marched in any ‘gay pride’ parade,” Trost bragged in an email to his supporters in the hours following Campbell’s tweet (the scare quotes around the words “gay pride are Trost’s, not mine). “Brad is not a big fan of the gay lifestyle,” Trost’s spokesman declared later for anyone who didn’t get it the first time.

As much as Campbell may insist he is not homophobic, and does not support Trost’s stance, his motion gives Trost and other bigots oxygen. Former mayor Rob Ford did the same thing during the 2014 Sochi Olympics when he objected to the Pride flag being raised at City Hall.

A year or so ago, Desmond Cole—journalist, activist, and friend—chatted with me about a meeting he’d had with John Honderich, at that time the publisher of the Toronto Star. Cole told me that Honderich had come to him with concerns, namely that Cole’s writing niche—namely race, racism, and policing—could possibly limit him. Desmond was deeply upset by the conversation, and the best I could manage was a derisive laugh. After all, Desmond had become a widely known name in journalism not only because of his deeply thoughtful and heart-wrenching writing on racialized matters, but also his strident and uncompromising activism in service of the marginalized.

The Star knew exactly who they were bringing in when they asked him to write for them. And, as many in the Black community knew they would, the Star made the mistake of believing Desmond Cole’s activism should (or even could) be reined in. The rules regarding a balance between journalism and activism don’t seem to have applied to other activists whose bylines have regularly appeared in the Star. So I have to say it: What I’m left with is the impression that the Star believed Desmond Cole to be their negro.

Last week, Desmond announced on his blog that he will no longer be writing columns for the Star. Before I get to the reason why, I’d like to point something out. Last year, I spent considerable time scouring daily publications in Canada for the presence of Black opinion columnists. As far as I can tell, Desmond’s was one of only three columns written by a Black journalist at any major daily print publication. The others are written by Royson James (a city writer for the Star), and Vicky Mochama (a race, gender, and politics writer for TorStar-owned Metro News). I’ll put it this way: if a plane carrying the three of them were to crash into the Atlantic, that could represent a 100 per cent loss of Black newspaper columnists for the large dailies.