June 2019 – The Hungover Pundit

Solidarity

It’s been seven days since anarchist and activist Cedar Hopperton was arrested for parole violations in relation to the fascist hate-group attack on the Pride festival in Hamilton, Ontario. Ironically, it appears that the very “parole violation” they were accused of — attending a rally that became violent — simply didn’t happen. Several members of the community have testified that Hopperton wasn’t at Pride, knowing that there was the potential for violence by fascists and religious zealots, so they stayed away, intending on keeping their parole in good faith. The Hamilton police, with no evidence, simply told the parole board to revoke Hopperton’s parole and they were arrested. To date, Hopperton has not been given any sort of court hearing or judicial process.

I’m not going to dive too deep into the absolute shitshow that is municipal politics in Hamilton at the moment. There’s plenty of media coverage about it, if you care to study how institutionalized homophobia and racism and impact a community. This post is about the fallout, and how people come together — or don’t — in support of each other.

Pride 2019 Part 3 — Cops and Nazis

It’s been a long, ugly week for LGBTQ people in Hamilton and the Niagara. The fallout from the fascist attack on the Hamilton Pride Festival has dominated the community since the 15th. Last Thursday Hamilton Police Chief Eric Girt doubled down on blaming the LGBTQ community for the slow and completely inadequate police response to the hate groups’ violence, infamously stating “We were not invited to the event. We were asked not to be at the event and we remained on the perimeter.”

A quick recap for clarity, if you’re just joining us: The Hamilton Police Service, like Hamilton city officials, were asked not to have an official presence at Pride ceremonies, and the HPS were specifically asked not to run a police recruiting booth at the Pride festival. This request was made because Hamilton Police have a very poor record of interacting with the LGBTQ community, including the perception of selective policing and especially with racial profiling, to the degree that many LGBTQ people in Hamilton feel uncomfortable around, if not outright threatened by, uniformed police.

Core Concepts 4 — Our Home On Native Land

Today is National Indigenous People’s Day in Canada.

As a settler who is trying to understand Native issues and work in solidarity with Native peoples it has been my habit on this day, ever since a friend passed on a challenge a few years ago, to “Share on social media the names of the First Peoples whose territory I live on, the Treaty or Treaties which govern where I live, and the place where my ancestors came from.” Usually I just make a short post on Facebook, but since I’ve got this new blog, I’m going to expand my usual post.

Blog Changes

Just a quick note to acknowledge some changes around here — I’ve updated the blog’s look and fiddled with the colours to make it a little less stock-Wordpress. I’ve added some new content, including subscribe and support options to the right of the page, Facebook and Twitter share links at the bottom of posts and a few other cosmetic changes, including a page setting that will allow me to hide long posts behind a “continue reading” link.

Pride 2019 Part 2 – Under Attack

Last week I wrote a blog post about titled Pride 2019 about the pressures on LGBTQ Pride celebrations this year and the context in which they occur. Near the end of that post I stated “So here we are, partway though Pride 2019. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re commodified and divided and we’re under attack by religious bigots, the alt-right and literal fucking Nazis… and we’re supposed to rely on the same police who have repeatedly broken the trust of our community to protect us.”

Yeah, I really hate being right. Four days after I wrote that, Hamilton Ontario’s Pride celebration was attacked. On the morning of Saturday June 15th 2019 a group of extreme-right wing religious protesters met up with a group of the neo-fascist Yellow Vests and the neo-Nazi Canadian Nationalist Party members who have been congregating at Hamilton Ontario’s City Hall every Saturday and then marched on the Pride celebration at Gage Park with the clear intent of violently disrupting the proceedings.