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The soundtrack to my day is CBC Radio.

On March 28, the lead item in the early morning news was a report that Councillor John Campbell was proposing a motion to cut Pride Torontos funding because of its decision to exclude an official Toronto police float from the Pride parade. It was a fairly long item for radio news.

Campbell described Black Lives Matter as bullying Pride Toronto into taking this position after it stopped the parade last year. He made a great deal of the value of inclusivity at Pride. Though not a member of the LGBTQ community or movement, he defined its core value as inclusivity rather than, say, social justice. He spoke at length and in a calm voice that signalled that he was being quite reasonable about all this. Campbells opinions and perspectives were not balanced by other points of view. No other voice was heard. Later Campbell said that Pride Toronto needed to come to their senses.

I was absolutely stunned.

I participated in the Pride march in the early 1980s when it was still a fairly small annual protest that ended up at the University of Toronto, where 20 organizations set up tables. On a small stage, the Parachute Club performed their anthem Rise Up and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence swished around on in-line skates. I still remember the boy I liked, wearing only Adidas shorts (with the little pocket on the back), running in and out of a sprinkler.

Since the 1990s, the parade has grown and changed.

I witnessed the protest by Black Lives Matter that halted the parade on Yonge in 2016. I saw 10 or 12 Black queer women (women have played an extraordinary role in grassroots organizing in Toronto for years) and a few of their young Black gay friends. Many wore leather and looked like they were having fun, though it must have taken extraordinary courage to bring the whole parade to a stop as a protest against systematic police violence against Black people and anti-Black racism in Pride Toronto itself.

In the early years of gay liberation, the police always tried to prevent gay marches from taking Yonge Street. I remembervividly a large march where individual police officers started to grab people at random from the edges of the crowd, beating and arresting them. The grand marshal gave instructions on the sound system for everyone to sit down on the street. This made the police violence instantly visible to press photographers, and it immediately stopped.

There was a long delay while Bob Gallagher negotiated with senior police officers, and then the march continued.

I was never comfortable with the police float in the parade or with the recruiting booths for various police and prison services. Hundreds of small rainbow flags with the prison service badge are handed out.

But now Black Lives Matterare bullies.

I stopped listening to the CBC. Instead I played CDs: Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come, which actually includes a song about radio, and a boxed set of Beethovens late string quartets.

I started to understand why some female students in my classes couldnt bear to listen any more to CBC Radio after the Jian Ghomeshi scandal broke. Now I dont want to listen to the CBC any more.

The idea of fairness and balance in news reporting is not as simple as it seems. The CBCs Journalistic Standards And Practices guide is written in fairly general language. Fairness, balance and impartiality are the main themes.

Was CBC Radio News justified in permitting Campbell to express his opinions on Pride Toronto without any other point of view? For me the issue is clear: CBC broke the most basic rule of journalism, to give both sides of the story.

There is also the more debatable issue of whether this story was news at all.

A city councillor says he has five or six votes for cutting Prides funding out of a city council of 44 members. That was the news that CBC Radio News led with.City council would eventuallyvote27-17on May 26 to renew the city's $260,000 infunding to Pride.

The CBC Radio News story was covered by the Canadian Presss Brett Bundale, whose report was printed by the Toronto Star the following day and Macleans magazine website. Bundale follows standard journalistic practices of balancing Campbells statements with quotes from Black Lives Matter. In an email to me, Bundale confirms that he had no problem contacting Janaya Khan, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, but he had more trouble getting hold of Pride Toronto, who were not quoted in his story.

We know about cutbacks to the CBC budget and complaints from former prime minister Stephen Harper affecting its coverage. Perhaps the problem is understaffing?

Journalists at the CBC are expected to work across all platforms: radio and TV news and the CBC News website. Perhaps this led to the problem? The reporter who filed the story, Makda Ghebreslassie, is described online as a video journalist.

But I was also concerned that the CBC may now measure a successful story by the amount of activity it generates on Twitter.

The story actually seems to have little substantial content. It is news because it creates controversy, and controversy generates Tweets.

It turns out that the executive director of Pride Toronto, Olivia Nuamah, was not immediately available to the CBC. In an email, Nuamah explains that if the reporter had actually turned up at the offices of Pride Toronto, she would probably have gotten her interview. For me, this raises a whole series of disturbing issues.

Doesnt the CBC have LGBTQ reporters?

Ghebreslassies story was repeated that evening on CBC Television. This time Campbells position was balanced by a statement from Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who does not support de-funding Pride. This is also the position of Mayor John Tory and police Chief Mark Saunders.

But the damage was already done. The issue was framed as one of inclusivity.

The idea of inclusivity in the LGBTQ movement has to do with its origin among mostly white, middle-class activists.

Inclusivity as a goal means the (sometimes painful) process of broadening the movements scope to include the lives, perspectives and forms of organizing of a much more diverse population. Inclusivity in this sense means including Black Lives Matter, a separate organization from Pride Toronto, some of whose members are part of the LGBTQ community.

The thematic frame for the story has become an empty and ahistorical concept of inclusivity. Matt Galloway, host of Metro Morning, said the program has received many emails on both sides of the issue. But he concluded that the main issue is that youre either inclusive or youre not inclusive.

I received an email response to my complaint from acting executive producer Rita Tonelli of CBC Toronto. Having reviewed the script, she agrees that it is reasonable to expect a voice countering Campbells. However, Pride Toronto did not respond to the reporters request and another city councillor was not readily available. What do these phrases mean? A looming deadline made the story that urgent?

The CBC ombudsman is Esther Enkin. In an interview given for World Radio Day 2017, she says she sees her job as listening to people who have issues with the CBC and advocating on their behalf to the organization. This has not been my experience with her.

Her May 24 letter in response to my formal complaint added very little, but does confirm that the Campbell story was a CBC exclusive and the reason for rushing it on to air was the fear that one would lose exclusivity.

An interview with Pride executive director Nuamah that aired on Metro Morning days later was really great. Its completely unclear why the whole story could not have waited a day (the meeting of the economic development committee to approve the budget was more than a month away) so that Campbell and a representative of Pride Toronto could have given their different perspectives one after the other on the same edition of Metro Morning.

Alan OConnor is a professor of media studies at Trent University.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

Read the original:
How did CBC Radio's Black Lives Matter versus Pride funding coverage go so wrong? - NOW Magazine

Amara McLaughlin, CP24.com Published Saturday, June 3, 2017 11:15PM EDT Last Updated Saturday, June 3, 2017 11:19PM EDT

Black Lives Matter Toronto, the advocacy group responsible for barring uniformed Toronto Police Service officers from marching in Canadas largest Pride parade, wont be participating this year either to ensure their presence is felt through the parade in other organizations.

A number of us are involved in a variety of organizations, and for us its important to participate in Pride fully, said co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto Rodney Diverlus. Part of that is ensuring that our presence is felt through the parade.

Black Lives Matter Toronto didnt register by the May 20 deadline for this years parade, a move guaranteeing the controversial group cant take part in the June 25 march.

We see Pride as an opportunity to attend various events and we see Pride as an opportunity to highlight anti-blackness where it arises, Diverlus told CP24.

He added their decision to not participate ensures the black queer and transgender communities have a presence in other affiliated groups, such as the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention the organization provides outreach, prevention and support services for people from Torontos African, Caribbean and black communities who are affected by or at risk of contracting HIV.

Black Lives Matter Toronto stalls Pride parade

Black Lives Matter Torontos history with Pride Toronto is fraught with controversy.

Black Lives Matter, which was given the status of honoured group at last years Pride, brought the Toronto parade to a half-hour standstill when it launched a demonstration to hold Pride accountable for its anti-blackness.

The parade didnt re-start until after Pride Torontos former executive director Mathieu Chantelois agreed to sign a list of the groups demands.

According to Diverlus, Pride Toronto has historically recanted on its promises and commitments to the black LGBTQ community.

The group said in a news release that Pride Toronto showed little honour to black queer/trans communities, and other marginalized communites. Over the years, Pride has threatened the existence of black spaces at Pride that have existed for years

The list of demands included a commitment to increasing representation among Pride Toronto staff, alongside banning police floats.

Pride Toronto community bans uniformed police from parade

At Pride Torontos annual general meeting in January, the Pride community voted to remove uniformed officers and police floats from future parades.

Pride Torontos executive director Olivia Nuamah clarified the agreement saying LGBTQ officers and their allies will be able to march in the parade, without their weapons, uniforms and vehicles.

Look at the broader issue

Although the rainbow Pride flag was raised in a historic first atop Toronto police headquarters to kick off Pride Month, the controversy over police participation and anti-blackness in Pride is far from over, Diverlus said.

In this action specifically, were talking about anti-blackness within Pride. That was the conversation and a year later we still feel as if part of that conversation is still missing, he explained. People are still fixating on whether or not individual police officers are invited or not, but we actually have to look at the broader issue.

The broader issue here is that Pride has to be more inclusive towards queer and transgender black communities.

While Pride Toronto has accepted Black Lives Matters demands, the group still sees room for improvement, including addressing anti-blackness at a variety of levels.

My participation in Pride will include talking about these issues, Diverlus said. It will include making sure that were moving beyond just fixating on one demand.

See the rest here:
Black Lives Matter missed Pride parade deadline to ensure representation in other groups - CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

A Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle (Jason Redmon/AFP/Getty Images)

The Journal of Political Philosophy has come under fire for its June issue, which dedicates more than 60 pages to a three-author symposium on the Black Lives Matter movement and does not include any actual black voices.

The journal has since apologized for not including the work of black philosophers, but as Inside Higher Ed reports, the incident has drawn attention to the fact that the journal has a poor record of including black scholars and, prior to the symposium issue, did little to include scholarship on issues of race.

Two scholars in African-American studies have circulated open letters criticizing the journal for erasing the experience of black people while covering an issue such as the Movement for Black Lives.

Christopher Lebron, an assistant professor of African-American studies and philosophy at Yale University, wrote: The idea black lives matter is an ethical demand calling for an end to the erasure of black lives and presence by systems of racist power anchored in a history of white supremacy. In our current moment, both the idea and the movement are aligned against the notion that black experiences are irrelevant or negligible for organizing our collective view of civil society.

Lebron continued: Try to imagine my distaste when it was brought to my attention that your journal published a philosophical symposium on black lives matter with not one philosopher of color represented, without one philosopher of color to convey her or his contextualized sense of a movement that is urgently and justifiably about context. It certainly cannot be said there was no one to ask. I should know. I just published a book on the philosophical foundations of black lives matter.

Lebron went so far as to research the publication history of the journal and found that The Journal of Political Philosophy has not published a single article on the philosophy of race: voting, elections, immigration, global markets and animals have gotten their time in the journals sun. But as black Americans, and the philosophers who study racial inequalitya political philosophical problemhave directly engaged one of our eras most sinister moral and political quandaries, the journal has failed to represent race in its pages. Maybe more damning, so far as I can tell, not one black philosopher has seen her or his work appear in the pages of your respected journal, on race or any other topic.

Melvin L. Rogers, who is the Scott Waugh Chair in the Division of the Social Sciences and associate professor of political science and African-American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in his letter, It is profoundly troubling that a symposium named in honor of the movement effectively performs the invisibility and devaluation of black life via the exclusion of scholars of color that the movement would otherwise challenge.

Rogers continued, This is especially upsetting because there are a number of political theorists and philosophers of color positioned to easily say something meaningful about the movement and its connection to substantive normative issues.

The editors of the journal responded to both letters with the following apology:

We, the editors, sincerely apologize for the oversight in not including a black author in a symposium explicitly entitled Black Lives Matter. We accept the point eloquently and forcefully made by our colleagues that this is an especially grave oversight in light of the specific focus of Black Lives Matter on the extent to which African-Americans have been erased and marginalized from public life.

They have also vowed to meet and discuss how the symposium was planned in order to consider the lessons learned from what happened, and invite two black scholars to join the editorial board, which, although it has nonwhite people, does not contain any blacks.

The journal also vows to work harder to encourage work from philosophers and political theorists of color as we have done with women and young scholars in the past, and we will revise our editorial guidelines to reflect this commitment.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed.

More:
Journal Publishes 'Black Lives Matter' Issue Without Any Black Writers - The Root

Arguably no movement has been more controversial in recent years than the Black Lives Matter movement. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, all African American victims of senseless killings. There are many more victims who did not receive national media attention. These tragic deaths all share a stunning commonality they are the direct result of discrimination against African Americans. Our former president is African American and the civil rights movement took place nearly 60 years ago. How is discrimination still an issue for African Americans? The continued prevalence of racial stereotypes is partially to blame. Black Lives Matter has been criticized by some who say All Lives Matter and claim the movement is racist.

This year, Ziad Ahmed made headlines when he was accepted into Stanford University after writing, #BlackLivesMatter one hundred times as his answer to What matters to you, and why? on his application. This is an example of the deep personal investment some people have in this polarizing movement. The (recently disgraced) news anchor Bill OReilly is a vocal critic of the movement and in 2016 commented, White Americans despise this crew. All Lives Matter critics argue that the movement is racist for emphasizing the value of African American lives only. These detractors see no evidence of structural racism in our society. They refuse to accept that our laws and criminal justice system demonstrate that black lives are valued less than white lives in our society. Black Lives Matter doesnt claim that African American people are superior; it advocates for racial equality and an end to discrimination. This hardly fits the definition of racism.

The unequivocally conservative position to oppose the Black Lives Matter movement is based off a misconception. The idea that affirmative action leads to reverse racism (discrimination by racial minorities against the racial majority) is entrenched within the logic behind the All Lives Matter stance on this issue. Affirmative action are policies in which an institution or organization actively engages in efforts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups. The misconception is that these affirmative action policies discriminates against deserving whites in favor of their lesser qualified black peers. This logic is flawed. And racial quota systems are outlawed in most states. This is a manifestation of a stereotype that African Americans are less intelligent and comes from generations of discrimination which have embedded this bias into society.

Take the [hypothetical] situation, of a white police officer shooting an unarmed blackteenager. There is no video, the officer claims he was acting in self-defense, and there are only a few witnesses who are all African American. If this officer were put on trial for murder, what would the defense do? Attempt to discredit the witnesses? Try to portray the witnesses as anti-police, uneducated, incompetent, criminal, biased, and immoral? What is this doing besides trying to convince the jury that the voice of one white person is worth more than several black voices? If this police officer were found not guilty like other officers who have faced similar trials, what does that say about our society? Ironically, the justice system in this instance is leaving the African American community without justice.

African Americans currently face structural racism. The All Lives Matter movement discredits the notion that African Americans struggle with this on a daily basis. This viewpoint reflects white privilege and fails to acknowledge the everyday reality that African Americans face. When you say All Lives Matter, you deflect attention from racism in this country. That is because the point of All Lives Matter is to diminish the Black Lives Matter movement and black lives.

The cities Baltimore, Charleston, and New York have all payed out seven figure settlements to families of prominent victims. Despite this, none of these cities have admitted any wrong doing by officers. If All Lives Matter then why have the families of these victims not received justice? With the exception of the OJ Simpson trial it is hard to find another example of a publicized case that had a favorable outcome for the African American victim or defendant. Justice for these victims would be achieved in the form of the people behind these killings being held responsible. It would include recognition by elected officials that to this day African American people face discrimination. If all lives really do matter, than as former President Obama said, lets Not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness or as politics or attacks on police.

Jack Ryan

Class of 2020

Pre-major in college of arts & sciences

Read more:
Guest Editorial: The Importance of Black Lives Matter | Opinion ... - Dailyuw

Although it wont march as an official group later this month, Black Lives Matter Toronto is satisfied with the changes Pride has made over the past year.

Theres been clear and visible progress, says Rodney Diverlus, the 27-year-old co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto.

During the 2016 parade, Pride Toronto agreed to a list of nine demands after Black Lives Matter halted the march for half an hour. The demands were later endorsed in a vote by Pride Torontos membership.

While most of the public and political focus has been on the demand to remove police floats from the parade, the eight other requests mostly focused on increasing diversity and grassroots participation throughout Pride month.

The hype around the police demand has erased all of the work, all of the thought and all the energy put around the other eight demands, Diverlus told Metro.

The spirit of some of those demands came from a general feeling in the community that Pride was evolving into a corporate, non-community-driven event.

He held up the reinstatement of the Black Queer Youth and South Asian community stages as well as increased funding for Blockorama as signs of success.

Pride Toronto spokesperson Ryan Connelly also pointed to the organizations increased focus on community stages and diversity among Pride Toronto staff while acknowledging there is room for improvement.

I think weve made very good strides, Connelly told Metro.

Were never going to get it all in one shot, but what is important to note is we will make our best effort as soon as issues are raised.

Despite these improvements, Black Lives Matter wont officially march in this years Pride parade on June 25. The group did not apply by the May 20 deadline.

Diverlus called it a tactical decision.

If you know the work we do, applying for permits and registering on a deadline is not really our MO, he said, adding that safety is a concern for the organization.

You should expect BLM to do what we do, which is not fill out an application and let you know where were going to be.

Black Lives Matter Torontos demands from 2016:

Read the original here:
Black Lives Matter applauds 'clear and visible progress' by Pride Toronto - MetroNews Canada