Black Lives Matter Vancouver (BLMV) March, called March on Pride was about the protest of numerous issues that affected QTBIPOC. However, the opposition against uniformed police participating in the Vancouver Pride Parade was central to the march (The Georgia Straight, 2017 & The Vancouver Sun, 2017). Considering the troubled history with law enforcement and queer people of color, the organization used the parade to voice its concerns. These concerns consisted of intimidation, harassment and the enactment of violence by agents of the state, particularly towards Blacks and Aboriginals.
I submit that there is also a problematic history between QTBIPOC and the white LGBT community. Even though the BLM Vancouver stressed the significance of not having uniformed police in the Pride parade, the Vancouver Pride Society allowed it (The Vancouver Sun, 2017). This scenario calls into question which personhood is valued more, whose voices are worthy of being heard and which bodies can occupy the space of belonging. In addition, the protest addresses the matter of the spatialized zones of oppression and trauma and the role of the city’s culpability. Additionally, the group voices its objection of the LGBTQ consumption at the expense of the lives of some queer people of color by blocking corporate involvement (The Georgia Straight, 2017 & The Vancouver Sun, 2017).
The march was from Yaletown to the West End on June 25, 2017. The parade route is significant since it represents a space of marginalization and psychological trauma for QTBIPOC. This continues to occur because of the white gay middle class’ performance of homonormativity in order to “belong” through the modes of the family, the state and market sanctions (Agathangelou et al 2008). This agenda is still being accomplished through their privileged status in engaging the city’s authorities in removing “unworthy” bodies such as people of color who were destitute, trans and sex workers. Although these disenfranchised individuals consider this zone their home, the city’s authorities regarded them as a threat to the city’s investments (Paola et al 2015 & Agathangelou et al 2008). Taking into account that these factors are related to social justice, human rights and poverty, the participants assembled at Emery Barnes Park at Davie and Seymour streets, which was named after the first Black male MLA in B.C. These topics were also the focus of Barnes’ personal and professional career.
The parade expressed Barnes’ philosophy by including the themes of safety and the celebration of people of colour. Therefore, it was a proclamation that reframed the Vancouver Pride Parade by making it a more inclusive event for queer, two-spirit and trans people of colour. Bearing this in mind, the organization demonstrates that there was a clear connection between Blacks and Indigenous Peoples. This was illustrated by Kamloops-based two-spirit activist and Thompson Rivers University instructor Jeffrey McNeil from Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc Nation who spoke at the protest about the overrepresentation of black and indigenous communities in jails, child apprehension and abduction cases, and profiling and death (The Georgia Straight, 2017). McNeil reinforced the group’s ideology of deposing of corporate sponsorship. This is because the embracement of capitalism by the LGBTQ community has diluted the original intent of Pride in New York City’s Stonewall riots in 1969. BLM Vancouver reiterated McNeil’s comments that Pride was about queer people of colour fighting back against raids by the police (The Georgia Straight, 2017). These protests, which were viewed through the lens of racism, was a means of coercing queer of colour individuals to confirm to normativity. In the past normativity was achieved through raids, currently one of the main instrument is racial profiling. The leaders of BLM Vancouver demonstrates Paola et al’s (2015) theory of placemaking by the utilising the march as a medium to create a space for their voices. This tactic was also a survival strategy.
The leaders of the organization are Black feminists. As such, they are representatives of the feminist of colour theories of The Combahee River Collection (1982). One of the mandate of the Collection is the establishment of a domain of value for women of colour that takes into account their race, gender, sex, and class. This is accomplished through the mode of identity politics, which states, “personal is my political”.
The Black Lives Matter Vancouver march echoes the mantra of the Black Lives Matter Movement, which is also that of Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela, which is “no one is free until we are all free”.
Work Cited:
Aagathangelou, Anna, M. Bassicchis and Tamara L. Spira. (2008). Intimate investments: homonormativity, global lockdown and the seductions of empire. Radical History Review, 100:120-143
Combahee River Collective. (1982). The Combahee River Collective Statement. In Smith, Barbara (ed.), Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthropology, pp. 264-274
Paola, Bacchetta, Fatima El-Tayeb and Jin Haritaworn. (2015). Queer of Colour Formations and Translocal Spaces in Europe. Environment and Planning D, 33(5): 769-778
The Georgia Straight. Black Lives Matter Vancouver march in West End to protest police participation in Pride 2017. Retrieved November 7, 2017 from
https://www.straight.com/life/929181/black-lives-matter-vancouver-march-west-end-protest-police-participation-pride-2017
The Vancouver Sun. Black Lives Matter holds alternate Pride march in Vancouver. Retrieved November 24, 2017 from http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/black-lives-matter-holds-alternate-pride-march-in-vancouver