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Pride season is an opportunity for our many allies and friends to celebrate and show support to our diverse LGBTQ2SIA+ communities. Many organizations use Pride... celebrations to demonstrate their organization’s stated values of diversity, equity and inclusion. As always, it was lovely to see our friends from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE Ontario) reflecting the spirit of Pride this year. CUPE Ontario in particular has gone beyond that, encouraging all its members across the province to show up to their community’s local Pride events, and to show solidarity in the face of the rising presence of far-right hateful agitators who have been bolder, louder, and more abusive to our communities this year. Therefore, we are disappointed Phillip Ness Thomas, Toronto District School Board employee and member of CUPE Local 4400, chose (again) to attend a Pride celebration with the intention to cause disruption, to harass, and to abuse our communities. Phillip Ness Thomas is an apparent ring-leader of so-called street preachers disrupting Pride events across Ontario with hate-filled rhetoric on the weekends, while working as a TDSB employee during the week. We are strongly concerned about his presence on TDSB property, and the impact this may have on TDSB students, parents, faculty, and staff, the school community, and community partners. His presence and employment at TDSB conflicts with the TDSB’s equity policy, stating its workforce should, at all levels, reflects, understands, and responds to a diverse population, and does not support a Positive School Climate, where all members of a school community feel safe, included, and accepted. As stated in the Toronto District School Board’s equity policy, students, staff, parents/guardians, caregivers, and community can voice concern, make reports, and lodge complaints if subjected and or witnesses to Harassment, or discrimination or a target of Bias, Prejudice or Hate. We encourage anyone who has been subjected to this hate to raise their concerns with the Toronto District School Board’s Human Rights Office. The Toronto Pride parade marked Ness Thomas’ fourth attendance at a Pride festival this year, so far. He and a number of cohorts began with a heinous display of hate in Dunnville ON on May 26 and continued on to Barrie, Hamilton, and Toronto (and have plans to go to London in July). They were joined by two notorious American hate preachers whose homophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric have landed them on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group watchlist. While we do not wish to give any air-time to the abuse that this group wishes to spread, we emphasize these actions because they have crossed lines into the territory of hate speech and assault. We stand against all that these hate groups represent. We urge everyone to stand up against this hate in our communities, workplaces, and unions. In Solidarity and Pride, Hamilton Queers Against Hate

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Reportback -- Shutting Down Hate at Hamilton Pride 2018 On June 17th, Hamilton celebrated Pride in Gage Park. As anticipated, this Pride Hamilton festival was t...he biggest in our city’s history, beginning with a moving rally and noise demo from 10:30am to 12:00pm. The afternoon featured a festival with 90 vendors; amazing performances on two stage areas; a fun Family Zone; and an information area with activities for youth. The park was full of friends and family celebrating the love and diversity of our queer communities. As was also anticipated, a group of religiously-motivated, hateful, and organized professional agitators attempted to disrupt the day. They approached the park from the south-western edge around 1:30pm armed with their now-familiar 12-foot banners invoking their warped interpretation of christianity. Their signs warned against a fairly broad range of 'sins' from gay marriage to NASCAR and from extra-marital sex to "being cool". They came armed with portable sound amplification devices, a range of recording devices such as go-pro cameras mounted at the base of several of their banners and on their persons, and wore clothing echoing the hateful messages of their banners. They were unsuccessful. The group was met with resistance quickly, a front line was established as word was spread to folks who were ready to counter their agitation across the park. Our allies in the Hamilton District Labour Council mobilized quickly, facing off with them and waving their flags in front of their cameras and banners, as our resources gathered. They were soon joined by Hamilton's Flamingo Mutiny Brigade, a samba drum group based off the international Rhythms of Resistance network of action bands, as well as community members and allies with noise makers, kazoos, even a sousaphone decked out in rainbows and playing comedic tunes. Community members had come prepared, handing out pre-made counter protest signs with messages ranging from poignant ("gay christian is not an oxymoron, but hateful christian certainly is") to funny messages trolling the haters (a personal favourite bearing the image of the recently-decided-by-tumblr-to-be-a-gay-icon 'the Babadook' against a rainbow background, bearing the words "sashay babaway" - unfortunately lost due to being grabbed and destroyed by one of the agitators - more on that later). Finally, the large blocking-banners arrived and were positioned in front of the banners of the agitators. The signs were made possible by the donation of large vinyl banners from Hamilton Youth Poets, with messages of love and support added by Hamilton's industrious and inspiring youth, facilitated through Speqtrum Hamilton's noise-maker and banner-making workshop On June 16th. Our youth demonstrated courage, resourcefulness and resilience in the face of hatred by putting themselves on the front line making noise and holding up signs under a blistering hot sun for hours. Much of our resistance was made possible through their hard work. Many of Pride Hamilton's volunteers also stepped up, holding signs, fetching water, and ensuring that anyone in need of support was connected with the active listeners volunteering to make sure anyone affected by the abusive screeds of the agitators were supported. Our objective in countering their hate was first, to ensure that they were not allowed to advance into the festival area, and would be contained on the outskirts. Second, we aimed to block any view of their banners. Our third objective was to drown out their ability to be heard, and to minimize the number of festival-goers who would be subjected to their name-calling and abusive harassment. We were victorious on all three fronts. When a group of agitators’ objective is to create a reaction and gain attention in the media, it can be challenging for communities to strategize ways to shut them down. We are not fooled by their rhetoric of free-speech and 'competing' rights. We have already heard what they have to say to our communities; it is vile, cruel, and potentially traumatizing to folks who are already vulnerable. Their 'preaching' is hate speech, full stop, and we are not obligated to give them space or oxygen to inflict it on our communities. We are proud of our communities in shutting down this hate speech by showing that love is louder. There were about a dozen of these agitators, with some familiar faces from their recent actions in Dunville, Toronto and Barrie. These included Philip Ness-Thomas, Andrew Tom, John Mark Moretti, Melody Summerhayes, a few familiar faces not yet identified, and some totally new faces. There were even a few children that someone decided to bring along, echoing the despicable tactic of using youth as human shields against consequences for harassment, made infamous by their predecessors and obvious inspiration the Westboro Baptists. Their American mentors, Ruben Israel and Jesse Morrell, were not in attendance, as they were in Dunnville. It seems that the Canadian hate-preaching fledglings are ready to leave the nest, and the soon-to-be-identified Hamilton-based congregation that supported May's American visitors on their hate tour got the weekend off from hosting and financing individuals whose Islamophobic and homophobic activity have landed them on the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s hate group watch list. The vibe of our counter-action was one of a celebration. Drummers and noise makers and musicians largely drowned out the agitators’ ability to be heard and we celebrated loudly, kissing and dancing and demonstrating resilience to this group of homophobic, far-right trolls. Our communities and allies largely kept their cool, despite the agitators’ aggressive efforts to instigate violence by walking into people and then claiming they had been touched, by putting cameras in people's faces, and by snatching and destroying at least one of our signs. Police briefly detained one counter-protester for allegedly damaging one of their banners (which they hypocritically demanded justice for, characterizing it as an assault, even though they had done the same to us mere moments before and were recorded doing so). As of now, no charges have been laid. Given that their protest was on the edge of the area of Gage Park for which Pride Hamilton's permit covered, we were told that they could not be removed or fined unless they advanced further, something that we were preventing them from doing. There was some tactical discussion about leaving the area and allowing them to do so; however, many folks decided that they did not wish to allow them the possibility of advancing. To do so would be to hedge our bets on law enforcement handling the situation appropriately, and after the incident in Dunnville (where many in the community felt let-down by the OPP’s response), we were not comfortable giving law enforcement the benefit of the doubt. The main festival was entirely unaffected by their presence. Many attendees were not even aware of the incident occurring on the outskirts of the area until they saw it on social media, and that was how we intended to keep it. Our communities and our allies held down the situation for over two hours in 40 degree heat, keeping up our energy and the celebratory blocking of their hateful abuse. After two hours of getting nowhere, with the exception of a few interviews with local media -- Phillip Ness-Thomas hilariously asked his cohorts if The Hamilton Spectator was a 'left-leaning' paper before agreeing to an interview and actually was told ‘yes’ (their impression that the Spec is left-leaning is perhaps the greatest indication of just how far right they are) -- the 'street preaching' haters indicated their desire to leave. Only then did we give them the space to move, with the Flamingo Mutiny Brigade leading us in a chant of Fuck These Haters, Lets Go Party" as we headed back to the main festival. We anticipate that this group will be visiting more local Pride events over the next several weeks. We also have seen that they are growing in number. We plan to be there anytime they show their faces in Hamilton again, and send our solidarity to all reasonable and justice-minded people in other communities who will face them in the near future -- we hope our experience is helpful to your efforts. Love is always louder, Hamilton Queers Against Hate

Make banners and drums for Pride Hamilton: Park Day 2018

Tonight! SAGE presents Queer and Trans Karaoke at The Hearty Hooligan! http://bentq.ca/event/s-a-g-e-queer-trans-karaoke