Prelude
I was born in Lachine, a suburb of Montreal in the province of Quebec. My family moved to west Etobicoke, Ontario in 1974 when I was 7 years old. I moved out when I was 20 years old, but it wasn’t until I was 23 that I moved downtown, where I’ve remained. For almost 20 years I lived within the boundaries of Bloor/Christie/St George and College, with a brief stint on Brunswick Avenue a few blocks north of Bloor. In 2007 I moved to Cabbagetown, east of Yonge for the first time. I fell in love with what’s known as West Riverdale, and I’m here to stay for a while.
This is my city. Especially the downtown. My various workplaces over the last 20 years, where I went to school (ah, OISE), my volunteer gigs, my credit union, all within this relatively small space in the larger city that I love so much.
Art, culture politics. In the late 1990s I read my written work for the first time in my life, to an audience as part of the Mayworks festival, at a venue on Church Street.
Why this preamble? Because today this was not my city. Today my city was taken over, today, I saw Toronto in a way that I have never seen it before, and it wasn’t good.
Saturday June 26, 2010
2pm
There are no streetcars running on my stretch of Carlton Street, so I walk to University Avenue. I pass Yonge Street and see my first set of police, standing around, not doing much, their riot helmuts dangling down one leg, and a large pouch strapped down their other leg. What’s in the pouch? Tear gas canisters? Extra rubber bullets? I will never know.
I arrive late to the march and rally, and join it in progress at University and College.
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This post has been a long time coming. I’ve had to sub-section it, in order to parse out my rage. Let’s see how well I do.
1. The Cost: Over One Billion Dollars
Are you fucking kidding me?!?
If we needed proof that the Harper government’s priorities are completely fucked up (and to be clear, we do NOT need proof) this is it on a gold-plated fucking Muskoka chair (I’ll get to the fake lake in a moment).
No improvements to health care
No much-needed funding to public education
No national child care program
No national drug/medication program
No increase to the anti-violence against women sector
No national affordable housing plan
No college/university tuition freezes, or free tuition altogether
Noooooo! All those are…what? What are they? TOO EXPENSIVE?!?!?!
But over One Billion Dollars for a 3-day party for the world’s elite is SOOOO worth it. Why? Because it’s who Harper cares about, and who he’s always cared about. Could there be any better proof than this?
Pride Toronto doesn’t like the phrase “Israeli Apartheid”.
Well, maybe that’s not true.
But funders of Pride Toronto (namely, the City of Toronto) and key corporate sponsors of Pride Toronto, definitely don’t like the phrase “”Israeli Apartheid”.
This phrase has been described as “hateful” and as contravening the City’s anti-discrimination policy and as making some community members feel “uncomfortable”.
Excuse me while I scratch my head, then pound it on my desk.
The phrase, not identifying any person or group of people, but speaking to a governmental policy and ideology is not hateful toward Jews, Israelis, or even Zionists. Because of that, it doesn’t in any way contravene the City of Toronto’s anti-discrimination policy, abiding by which is part of the agreement of accepting City money.
So first, Pride Toronto tried to ban the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from marching in the Pride Parade this year. This didn’t work because like all smart grassroots activists, they aren’t an “official” group. The name isn’t registered anywhere, and nobody is “on the hook” at QuAIA to funders or anyone else.
The next move is to ban the use of the phrase Israeli Apartheid.
Wrong move.
At a press conference this morning, 23 people who have been honoured in the past and in the current year by Pride (Grand Marshall, Honorary Dyke and other awards) returned their awards with words of sadness, regret and shame, that Pride Toronto has become a censoring body in the face of corporate and government funders. All indicated that they would be proud to take back their awards if Pride Toronto rescinded the ban on the phrase Israeli Apartheid.
The list of refuseniks, as Elle Flanders, moderator of the press conference, referred to them:
By Slumberjack
Gary Coleman R.I.P.
My interest in the show during the late 70s had little to do with the ‘what you talking bout’ routine, as entertaining as that was, but as a young male teenager in the late 70s, admittedly it had more to do with Dana Plato’s tight jeans.
At any rate, the concept of a white benefactor taking in two black kids from the ‘ghetto’ and raising them in an atmosphere that was portrayed as better and more sophisticated certainly fell through the crevices of youth at the time.
The clichéd notion of a sitcom, whereby proper grounding in the manners and etiquette of whiteness through practice, trial and error of course, [there'd be no lame punch lines without it] could transform two poor black kids into presentable facsimiles of whiteness in harmony with their surroundings didn’t reveal itself for what it was until later in life.
The sadness that comes with the passing of a human being is compounded by the realization that he was discarded by the corporate entertainment industry when he was determined to be of no further use to them.
This is the everyday reality of corporatism, where its cruel ramifications are more often than not first visited upon those who are disadvantaged in this society from the outset, regardless of the station they might achieve in life.
Hey everyone.
I’d like to introduce a new guest blogger who will be blogging here in this space occasionally.
Slumberjack’s intro is:
a few words from the white dude corner….some white dude who believes that corporatism is the root of all that renders human beings into favoured and unfavoured categories, and purposefully set upon on one another through the processes of exploitation.
Welcome, Slumberjack!
