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.
The Hamilton Police Service’s response to a completely justified community request? Completely abdicate their duty and withdraw police protection entirely. Knowing — and this is the important part — knowing in advance that a religious hate group and dozens of violent neo-fascist and literal Nazi thugs were planning to “disrupt” the Pride festival. And since some of the thugs showed up wearing body armour, I think we can all guess their “disruption” wasn’t going to be holding a singalong and handing out pamphlets: They planned to physically attack LGBTQ people — LGBTQ families — in the park and drive the Pride festival out. And police, forewarned about this possibility, simply refused to do their goddamn jobs out of spite.
“We were not invited to the event,” said Chief Girt, “We were asked not to be at the event and we remained on the perimeter.”
That’s not an explanation. That’s not even an excuse. That’s an admission of culpability.
Frankly, the only thing which prevented exactly the kind of bloodbath that LGBTQ people most fear were the actions of a group of anti-fascist defenders, including a group of masked “pink bloc” activists who suffered the brunt of the fascist violence for nearly an hour while police refused to assist.
Think about that: Only the courageous direct action of a group of about seventy civilian activists prevented what could easily have been a tragedy. (This firsthand account from one of the Pink Bloc members is very worth reading.)
That is not a good look for the Hamilton Police Service.
To date, ten days after the attack on Pride, not a single arrest of an attacker has been made. This despite the fact that all of the assailants have been identified online and their information doubtlessly passed on to police. No arrests, despite the fact that there is extensive video out there of posted by the fascists themselves bragging of their actions at Gage Park… and threatening more. Many of these same alt-right scum attended a Pegida-backed rally at Toronto Pride on Saturday June 22nd, and they attacked a number of anti-fascist counter-demontrators, including a videotaped assault in Toronto Eaton Centre mall. An anti-fascist counter-protester was swarmed by a number of assailants, including “helmet guy” Chris Vanderweide (who’s apparently been leveraging his video of assaulting Pride defenders in Hamilton to make himself into some kind of alt-right celebrity.) That counter-protester, a self-described Christian pacifist, was hospitalized.
This was only one of a number of similar incidents across Canada, but here in Ontario it’s clear that the inaction of the Hamilton Police has led directly to more violence, both by allowing the fascists to think they have tacit police support for their violence and by simply allowing violent and disturbed individuals to walk free despite abundant evidence that they are a threat. It’s been ten days since the violence at Gage Park and not a single fascist has been arrested.
I say there’s been no arrests of fascist attackers… but there was an arrest last week.
In the absence of any sort of leadership from Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger, and in response to rising public demands to do something, Hamilton Police arrested Cedar Hopperton on the morning of the 22nd while they (Hopperton is a trans person who prefers “they/them” pronouns) were handing out pamphlets before a peaceful counter-rally in front of Hamilton City Hall. The official reason given for the arrest was that they violated their parole conditions (Hopperton had been convicted of being the “ringleader” of an anti-gentrification action last year) by attending the Pride festival, which is apparently counts as “being at a demonstration which was not peaceful.”
Except… Hopperton wasn’t there. A number of people have come forward to state that Hopperton did not attend Pride knowing that there was the potential for religious zealots and hate group members to disturb the peace. They kept their parole conditions in good faith.
I’m not going to debate the rights and wrongs of the Locke St. anti-gentrification march in this post, but the optics of the current situation look very much like the police decided they needed a scapegoat and grabbed a convenient trans person they felt would not be defended by the community at large because they were already seen as a “troublemaker”.
Now, for the record, I don’t know Cedar Hopperton. I’ve never met them. I’d never even heard of them until their epic “We Fucking See You” call-out of Deputy Police Chief Frank Bergen during a community meeting on the Hamilton Pride attacks on June 18th. Bergen had attended the community meeting in uniform and many interpreted his presence as an attempt to intimidate the community. Hopperton, in what I have been told was an entirely typical move for them, refused to allow such intimidation to pass unchallenged: “I would encourage those people right now sitting at the back to get the fuck out. We fucking see you.”
And now Hopperton has been jailed for speaking truth to power. Because they’re vulnerable. Because police decided they could be conveniently used as a scapegoat. Not, it’s becoming increasingly clear, because they did anything other than speak out against a police force which is apparently supporting and enabling violent hate groups.
And that should scare the hell out of all of us.
The Hamilton Police Service failed in their duty at Pride. Failed. They have continued to fail in their duty by refusing to investigate the violent fascist hate groups at Gage Park, offering the flimsy excuse “No victims have come forward.” This despite a mountain of video evidence including public boasts by the attackers. (Canadian criminal law, for the record, does not require a victim’s cooperation to lay assault charges.) There have even been allegations that the HPS has been actively harassing potential victims, not to get their testimony, but in an attempt to keep them silent. Community consensus seems to be that the police are far more interested in identifying the masked “Pink Bloc” defenders than they are in pursuing violent fascist thugs.
Which raises another serious concern, and it’s time we addressed that particular elephant in the room.
In a publicized statement of support for Hopperton from the Hamilton and District Labour Council, HDLC President Anthony Marco addressed the HPS and Mayor Eisenberger with a phrase that held particular poignancy for me: “We can only assume that the choice not to act on it, in the case of these hate groups, is political and not ideological. If it is ideological, we have a much bigger problem.“
Ever since the attack at Gage Park, people have been demanding to know why the police didn’t do their jobs, why they haven’t done their jobs, and why they continue not to do their jobs. As a white cis-gendered person, I completely understand why the instinctive response is to demand we receive value for money because Police inactivity endangers us.
As an LGBTQ anarchist, I understand that the Police are doing their jobs as they see it. To a police officer, the Pink Bloc, anarchists and anti-fascists are the real threat. A bunch of neo-Nazi thugs beating up queers and anarchists in the streets is clearly not a priority for the Hamilton Police Service, and why would it be? Those aren’t the kinds of people who make trouble for the cops. They don’t rock the boat. They don’t hold the police to account.
This is going to be a shock for most middle class (read: white) Canadians to hear, but the Police’s job is not to defend the public, it’s to defend the status quo. That means making the roads run smoothly for commerce, protecting the property of the wealthy, and making the streets safe for white people.
Every person of colour in this country can tell you the simple truth: The Policeman is not your friend. Every Leftist can back it up. Many queer people have experienced this truth. And many queer, Left and POC folks in Hamilton Ontario would tell you the same from direct experience. That’s the reason Hamilton Police weren’t invited to Pride: HPS has a history of disproportionately policing minorities and LGBTQ people in the city. They’ve attempted to silence and demonize anarchists and antifascists. Apparently they have a thin skin for being called out on it, too.
There is this middle-class fantasy that police exist as a neutral organization dedicated to the dispassionate application of justice and law within our society. That is not the case at all. Police are just another faction within our social and political landscape, with their own goals and ambitions and needs within that landscape. And when you understand that the police have their own social and political agenda, you understand why the HPS decided to punish the LGBTQ community by withdrawing their protection from Pride. You understand why they’ve turned a blind eye to rising fascist violence against LGBTQ people and minorities. And you understand why they arrested Cedar Hopperton — an identified “troublemaker” who ticks all their boxes — on trumped-up and provably untrue charges.
Chris Vanderweide, Rick Boswick, Justin Long and other violent fascist thugs are allowed to run free, threatening people and committing acts of violence without any interference by Police… and possibly with the cops’ tacit support because their goals are largely compatible with those of the police. Cedar Hopperton is currently in prison on a hunger strike because their goals are not. It’s as simple as that. There is no justice in this situation, and there will not be until we work together we work together in solidarity and to force justice to done.
I’ve been trying to find a way to end this on a positive note because frankly, this has been a massively demoralizing week for a lot of people in the LGBTQ community in Hamilton and the Niagara. And the only thing I can find to put a silver lining on this dark cloud is that word: Solidarity. People are coming together to challenge this injustice. People are holding the police and politicians to account. More “mainstream” groups like the Hamilton & District Labour Council are adding their voices. Calls for independent investigations of police conduct and for the resignation of senior officers are increasing. Mainstream media are paying attention to the growing threat of white supremacists organizing in the Hamilton area, and city councillors are looking for ways to stop hate groups from using public spaces.
We must work together to cause justice to be done. We must hold police and politicians accountable for their actions and their inaction. And we must send a message to the religious zealots, the fascists and Nazis and homophobes: We encourage those people to get the fuck out. We fucking see you.
#FreeCedar.
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Update — The CBC is now reporting that a second arrest has been made by Hamilton Police. Name of the arrestee as not been released, but the local Anarchist social space, the Tower, made an announcement on its Facebook page that “This is the second targeted arrest of people defending Pride as police continue to target queers and the LGBTQ2+ community.”
