It likely won’t be the best received, but I wasn’t a fan of the Ottawa Pride group making this decision last year to allow the pride parade to become a Palestine protest as well.
The largest reason for me is that here in Ottawa, we have had Palestinian protests each week through the summer. There was no shortage of Saturdays where Elgin and other areas were shut down for the protests to move through town. All of this I have no problem with, and it’s part of living in the nations capital.
The problem I had with it was including the movement in the pride parade because I’m uncomfortable with a pro-palestinian message from the LGBTQ+ community because it just doesn’t exist over there. There’s a positive vibe during the pride parades about what the community has worked through and what it continues to work through, and I’m sorry but I still think too much about what some religions want to do to these groups, so mixing the messages doesn’t sit well to me.
This inclusion of the Palestine protest in the pride parade ended up with it losing a lot of funding, and supporters as well who didn’t want to get involved in the Palestinian protests, whether they supported them or not. For some of them pride is a celebration and seeing it turned into something else didn’t sit well.
Just a local opinion and the vibe that I sensed from the less-online community (read:older). It’s really not something that ended my support of anything, just something that I felt tried too hard to be inclusive.
Can I ask how many of of your irl community is queer?
Because I see this opinion online, but my local queer community in Kitchener is all supportive of Palestine, and recognizes that liberation means liberation for all.
Absolutely a fair question, and to answer, I have a number of friends that I skate with who represent many swaths of the community. We get along great and enjoy each others company, but at the same time, most are also younger than me, mostly younger to mid 20s, so I’m aware that how engaged we are is different.
These youths are engaged heavily, being involved in the Palestine protests, and very vocal about the war since it began. I’ll admit I’ve known about the settler issue in Palestine for the better part of a decade now, so I did find it upsetting that at the beginning it felt like there were a number of people “jumping on the bandwagon” of protesting, but after a little introspection I remembered that I was young and didn’t know about these things, and it had to be taught to me too.
A few of my older friends who identify as gay though also had a similar hesitation of getting involved in the protests. I think there’s a subset who have been harassed by the religions communities (and I don’t just mean palestinian religions, Christian and others as well) and would prefer that the pride parade stays a reminder of what they fought for in the generations before, and have overcome to have a much more free society for them today. Liberation does mean liberation for all, just that some people don’t feel like that group wants them to be liberated. I think the difference in age gap is what has interested me about this difference (is dichotomy the right word?
All of this to say, I just didn’t attend. I was happy that the people attending felt seen or heard, and I went on with my day. It’s a reminder that while I had an opinion and didn’t agree how things were handled, it’s not the end of the world and doesn’t really affect me that much.
It likely won’t be the best received, but I wasn’t a fan of the Ottawa Pride group making this decision last year to allow the pride parade to become a Palestine protest as well.
The largest reason for me is that here in Ottawa, we have had Palestinian protests each week through the summer. There was no shortage of Saturdays where Elgin and other areas were shut down for the protests to move through town. All of this I have no problem with, and it’s part of living in the nations capital.
The problem I had with it was including the movement in the pride parade because I’m uncomfortable with a pro-palestinian message from the LGBTQ+ community because it just doesn’t exist over there. There’s a positive vibe during the pride parades about what the community has worked through and what it continues to work through, and I’m sorry but I still think too much about what some religions want to do to these groups, so mixing the messages doesn’t sit well to me.
This inclusion of the Palestine protest in the pride parade ended up with it losing a lot of funding, and supporters as well who didn’t want to get involved in the Palestinian protests, whether they supported them or not. For some of them pride is a celebration and seeing it turned into something else didn’t sit well.
Just a local opinion and the vibe that I sensed from the less-online community (read:older). It’s really not something that ended my support of anything, just something that I felt tried too hard to be inclusive.
Can I ask how many of of your irl community is queer?
Because I see this opinion online, but my local queer community in Kitchener is all supportive of Palestine, and recognizes that liberation means liberation for all.
Absolutely a fair question, and to answer, I have a number of friends that I skate with who represent many swaths of the community. We get along great and enjoy each others company, but at the same time, most are also younger than me, mostly younger to mid 20s, so I’m aware that how engaged we are is different.
These youths are engaged heavily, being involved in the Palestine protests, and very vocal about the war since it began. I’ll admit I’ve known about the settler issue in Palestine for the better part of a decade now, so I did find it upsetting that at the beginning it felt like there were a number of people “jumping on the bandwagon” of protesting, but after a little introspection I remembered that I was young and didn’t know about these things, and it had to be taught to me too.
A few of my older friends who identify as gay though also had a similar hesitation of getting involved in the protests. I think there’s a subset who have been harassed by the religions communities (and I don’t just mean palestinian religions, Christian and others as well) and would prefer that the pride parade stays a reminder of what they fought for in the generations before, and have overcome to have a much more free society for them today. Liberation does mean liberation for all, just that some people don’t feel like that group wants them to be liberated. I think the difference in age gap is what has interested me about this difference (is dichotomy the right word?
All of this to say, I just didn’t attend. I was happy that the people attending felt seen or heard, and I went on with my day. It’s a reminder that while I had an opinion and didn’t agree how things were handled, it’s not the end of the world and doesn’t really affect me that much.