Thank you, QAH, for making your voices heard once again despite implicit and explicit attempts to silence you. Instead of last week's Pride AGM being remembered as a historical moment of recognition of long-standing issues between Pride and the queer, trans, and two-spirit BIPOC community, it will instead be remembered as the infamous occasion when Pride was hijacked by mostly non-BIPOC straight and cis people for their own interests. And the serving Pride board sat there and let it happen.
Most of us from the 2SLGBTQ+ community in that room that night wanted to move this event, and our community in general, forward towards something better. What is apparent now is that unless Halifax Pride radically transforms the way that it operates and who it prioritizes, the future of our community will be built outside of Halifax Pride.
We require spaces where BIPOC voices don't have to compete with dominant white homonormative voices in order to be heard. We need spaces that explicitly value racial justice and decolonization. We need non-BIPOC folx in 2SLGBTQ+ spaces to take a seat for once. I believe we can work towards this, but Halifax Pride as it currently stands is not the medium through which this will happen.
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Most of us from the 2SLGBTQ+ community in that room that night wanted to move this event, and our community in general, forward towards something better. What is apparent now is that unless Halifax Pride radically transforms the way that it operates and who it prioritizes, the future of our community will be built outside of Halifax Pride.
We require spaces where BIPOC voices don't have to compete with dominant white homonormative voices in order to be heard. We need spaces that explicitly value racial justice and decolonization. We need non-BIPOC folx in 2SLGBTQ+ spaces to take a seat for once. I believe we can work towards this, but Halifax Pride as it currently stands is not the medium through which this will happen.