No Cops at Pride 2018
Photography and Words
by Abdul Malik (abdulymalik@gmail.com)
On June 9, 2018, the Annual Pride Parade in Edmonton, Alberta, was halted by an ad-hoc group of Queer and Trans People of Color and Allies, who had four simple demands, all of which revolved around disinviting police from future Pride Parades, more space for trans and POC in the organizing, and a recognition of Pride as a protest against police brutality.
The protestors stopped the parade and would not budge until their demands were met. Surprisingly, violence and pushback came not from the police at the parade, but from other groups, mostly made up of white cis men and women, in particular, the leather daddies. These groups began verbally assaulting the protestors, eventually escalating to pushing and shoving. Racial slurs were hurled. The nearby float from the Alberta Treasury Branch Bank attempted to drown out the protestors with loud music.
The Pride Committee held an onsite meeting and came to the decision to acquiesce to the protestors demands, and the protestors dispersed, allowing the parade to continue. There are racial and class lines in our modern day interpretation of Pride as a celebration, and this protest put them in sharp relief. Direct action, though, did get the goods, and Edmonton became the second city in Canada to ban cops from marching in Pride through protest, after similar action in Toronto produced equivalent results. Vancouver pre-emptively disinvited police from having a Pride in order to stave off a protest.
