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Thousands of people danced, sang, and celebrated at Toronto\u2019s Pride Parade on Sunday until the procession was suddenly stopped mid-route and then cancelled by a protest.<\/p>\n
About 30 demonstrators, calling themselves the Coalition Against Pinkwashing, held banners and chanted on Yonge Street, just south of Wellesley Street, three and a half hours after the parade\u2019s 2 p.m. start. Floats and marchers making their way south toward the parade\u2019s finish at Nathan Phillips Square were stranded behind the protesters, who chanted \u201cFree Palestine\u201d and \u201cPride is a protest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forty-five minutes after the protest began, Pride Toronto announced the remainder of the parade \u2014 billed as Canada\u2019s largest \u2014 was cancelled.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made the decision to cancel the remainder of the parade out of our commitment to ensuring public safety,\u201d Pride Toronto spokesperson Anna Lee said in a statement. \u201cWhile we deeply respect and uphold everyone\u2019s right to peacefully protest, our foremost priority is the well-being of all participants and spectators.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a pamphlet handed out by the group, the protesters had six demands, chief among them the divestment from all corporations \u201cactively involved in violently exploiting native people\u201d on Turtle Island and in Sudan, Palestine, and the Congo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here for Palestine,\u201d protester Layla Salman said. \u201cWe\u2019re here to draw attention to the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toronto police gathered further down the parade route but did not take any action with the protesters, who left Yonge Street about two hours after they shut it down and marched west along Wellesley Street on the sidewalk. Police said they had \u201cadequate resources to address the protest,\u201d but were respecting Pride Toronto\u2019s request that officers not interfere if protesters disrupted the parade, police spokesperson Laurie McCann told the Star.<\/p>\n
It was not an unfamiliar situation. In 2016, a Black Lives Matter group brought the parade to a standstill when it stopped its float for more than 30 minutes \u2014 similarly refusing to move until officials met their demands. The parade continued after Pride leaders signed the list of demands on the spot.<\/p>\n
But this year, the demands went unsigned. Protester Faisal Samir said Pride Toronto offered a meeting to \u201cthink about\u201d the demands.<\/p>\n
And while the protesters sat in the street and chanted, the party continued just a few blocks over. Celebrations and bass-heavy music continued on Church Street, where vendors lined the pavement and restaurants overflowed.<\/p>\n
That was the atmosphere for most of the day along the parade route as spectators pressed against metal barricades, five deep at points, for the entirety of the 2.5-kilometre route, dancing, singing, and cheering as business groups and organizations marched by.<\/p>\n
That included SIBOL, the Filipino-Canadian Pride Network that formed last June. The group danced and waved the flag of the Philippines as it celebrated its first anniversary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no formal organization like us before,\u201d said Leo Gubac, one of the group\u2019s founders. \u201cThat was a source of inspiration for us. Why don\u2019t we create one for this group of people in the community, so we can find community and camaraderie together?\u201d<\/p>\n
The group wasn\u2019t alone. As many as 500 of the 1,760 volunteers registered for this year\u2019s Pride celebrations were believed to be recent arrivals to Canada, something Pride Toronto\u2019s education and volunteer manager attributed to the flood of legislation and violence against LGBTQ communities around the world.<\/p>\n
The volunteers helped facilitate the parade, a mammoth march with hundreds of groups participating. Floats blared Britney Spears\u2019 \u201cToxic\u201d and \u201cWomanizer\u201d while drag queens danced and a TV helicopter circled overhead.<\/p>\n
Chris Collens drove in from Kitchener, Ont., to march with his company, the Ontario Teachers Insurance Program. The company provided him with a Pride shirt \u2014 but he \u201chad a vision\u201d for the rest of the outfit.<\/p>\n
So he added rainbow sunglasses, suspenders, a hat and a bow tie. And then there was the centerpiece: rainbow pants with peace signs and music notes, purchased on a trip to Chicago, Ill. this spring specifically for the parade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pants say it all,\u201d said Collens, who has marched in the parade since 2017. \u201cYou can\u2019t walk five minutes down the street without people stopping for our look. But it\u2019s been great. Everybody\u2019s been so social, so friendly, so fun. It\u2019s just a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n
source: thestar.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands of people danced, sang, and celebrated at Toronto\u2019s Pride Parade on Sunday until the procession was suddenly stopped mid-route and then cancelled by a protest. About 30 demonstrators, calling themselves the Coalition Against Pinkwashing, held banners and chanted on Yonge Street, just south of Wellesley Street, three and a half hours after the parade\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,104],"tags":[543,544,545,546,547,548,549,550,551,552,553,554,555,556,124,557,558],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking","category-news","tag-celebration","tag-community","tag-diversity","tag-equality","tag-floats","tag-inclusion","tag-lgbtq-rights","tag-lgbtq","tag-march","tag-marchers","tag-pride-month","tag-pride-parade","tag-protesters","tag-solidarity","tag-sr","tag-stranded","tag-torontos-pride-parade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}