Was Pride Day a Bad Day?

C

 

       Was Pride Day a Bad Day?

 

             by Kenneth Bagnell  

   

 

 

   It’s now almost 50 years since, along with a CBC television crew, I went to Chicago to interview the most radical man I’d ever meet: Saul Alinsky, a social activist whose tactics were, at times, startling. When it came to social progress, he seemed to believe more in confrontation that conversation. He came to mind recently, given the tactic of Toronto’s BLM  (Black Lives Matter), in Toronto’s Pride Parade, shutting it down for a full half hour, and asking for a formal agreement on nine issues. That tactic recalls Alinsky’s methods. The main point of their contention was their angry demand for the banning of Toronto’s police float, with gay police officers aboard.  It wasn’t the issue that recalled Alinsky, but the tactics. Whether he achieved all he sought for the poor in the active years, mostly in the 1960s, I’m not sure. Barrack Obama would be a good man to ask since, during his youth in Chicago, he was close to Alinsky, close enough that there’s an article on him titled: “How Saul Alinsky taught Barack Obama everything he knows about civic upheaval.” Another interesting fact goes back to 1969, when Hillary Clinton, after much research, did her graduate thesis on Alinsky whom she greatly admired but whose methods she implies were not very effective. (The thesis was sealed while she and her husband were in the White House. My, my, I wonder why.)

      Our interest in Alinsky right now is that the tactic used by BLM on Pride Day’s parade is virtually right out of the Alinsky textbook. Did halting the parade for a half hour confrontation and making demands on the spot help the black gay community? Yes and no. Their demands, most quite reasonable, included increasing funding to black youth events, employing more black women, but most shocking: barring police floats with gay officers aboard. In my view, their method was like a holdup without weaponry. The key executives of the parade, Mathieu Chantelois and Alicia Hall, signed the document promptly, which invites another question: why didn’t the black community approach Pride a month or two ago? Answer: they wouldn’t get the publicity they got by waiting until the Pride Parade was underway and they’d get wide coverage. Their intrusion certainly did that in all media: print, radio, and TV.  Hence the Alinsky style strategy, did lead to some good things for BLM, by raising its movement, which was founded in the US in 2013.   

        It certainly is distinctly different than the thoughtful reflective Martin Luther King. He is not, so far as I can find, even mentioned in the movement’s founding and philosophy. (King was virtually a Christian pacifist.) The BLM, which was profiled in The Atlantic in 2015, is fully in line with the surprise tactic of Gay Pride Day in Toronto. As one of its US founders puts it:  “I think we are open to a myriad of strategies and a myriad of tactics. We think that everybody, no matter where you are, no matter your economic status, whatever your job is, you have a duty in this moment in history to take action and stand on the side of people who have been oppressed for generations … whatever means you need to take we believe that folks should do that.” The reference “whatever means you need to take” gives me pause as I expect it may give you. But radical activists, as Alinsky revealed, do take or threaten to take, aggressive tactics. Hence we should at least know more about this movement and what its tactics will be in the future.

       Its sudden appearance on Pride Day, has a positive side: the public right across the country and beyond now knows of its presence and even more its practice. (You’ll find a not unsympathetic article on it by googling: “Atlantic article, September 2015, “The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter.”) There will be many and varied responses to it, as was revealed in Toronto, when the intrusive act of BLM took place. The response was enormous, which of course, the movement is probably grateful for, even if it wasn’t kind. As a matter of fact, I checked The Toronto Star, the country’s largest daily, on Saturday July 9, which carried the letters from the public after the incident on Pride Day. There were 27 letters, all ranging from moderate criticism to angry outrage. Alinsky probably would say “great”.  

     Letters to the editor, in my experience, often reflect with surprising accuracy, collective public opinion on the subject they write about. Take as an example the response I mentioned to Canada’s paper with the highest daily circulation. Every letter opposed the quick on-the-spot aspect of BLM.  Three examples will reveal the perspective. A man from Thornhill, Ont. wrote: “The standoff between Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Pride was a sad example of opportunism. BLM has some very valid concerns; and I suspect that, had they presented them to Pride in a rational and businesslike manner, Pride would have addressed them appropriately…. But for BLM to disrupt a parade to which they had been specifically invited was discourteous and shameful. As for Pride signing a document accepting their demands, it’s hard to say no when you have a gun to your head….” A Scarborough reader says this: “BLM has worthy goals for the black community, but disrupting this event has only alienated many people. Relations  between the police and the black community are already strained. Actions such as this will only exacerbate the situation.” A final sample is from a North York reader: “This group overtook an event in support of the LGBTQ community and made it theirs when it didn’t involve them to begin with. They were honored guests at the parade this year and took full advantage of a loving and welcoming community…”  It should be stated that Mathieu Chantelois, Pride’s executive director, who in the heat of the deliberate moment, signed the document so the parade could continue, has declined any promise made by his signing; he signed simply to allow the parade to take place. I understand. After all what could he do? Cancel the popular parade and go home?

     There’s a very sad possibility in all this: that the indignity and anger will leave a wound in both cultures white and black, one that could divide us even more deeply. But the BLM group knew what it was doing in the Alinsky fashion. In my view leaders of both groups should gather and set a mutual strategy to recast that failed technique, despite the coverage which came with an angry response. The two parade directors had, as one reader said, a “virtual gun at their heads.”

     The Gay community will not criticize their directors, for they were acting under considerable tension. But the BLM, indeed knew precisely what they were doing, getting fresh publicity even if they failed in their objective. The BLM exploited a politically affirmed organization and its parade. They owe the Gay community a quiet, sincere apology. Moreover the parade organizers need to explore more carefully the groups which they ask to join the parade. It seems they did not know the confrontational tactics BLM had learned and adopted. Let’s bring the police float back. It’s good for the police, for Toronto and for Canada.