Pride organizers ponder police role

Duelling petitions thrust parade panel into middle of polarizing discussion

The group that organizes Vancouver’s Pride Parade every summer is being pulled in opposite directions over the presence of uniformed police officers marching in the event.

Black Lives Matter Vancouver recently started an online petition calling on the Vancouver Pride Society to “remove any and all presence” of uniformed members of the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP from the parade.

In response, a second petition was launched by an ad hoc group of four lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community activists in support of police remaining in the parade.

Kieran Burgess, the pride society’s co-executive director, said that during the past year the organization has consulted with people representing groups that include First Nations, transgender and visible minorities to understand barriers to participating in the parade.

Out of that process, the society developed a plan that revolves around the idea of bringing police into a “conversation.”

“We’re not banning police. That’s not our approach,” he said. “We want to draw them in and have a dialogue and change systems from within by working with them in their already established structure.”

Earlier this year, the pride society presented police with suggestions gathered from its consultation process about reducing its footprint in the parade, he said. The suggestions included not wearing uniforms and implementing procedures such as listening circles.

Burgess said the pride society board is scheduled to meet with Black Lives Matter on Feb. 21, and will then follow up with the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP on March 29.

“We want (the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP) to make a gesture to the community rather than us forcing them to do something,” he said.

The 39th annual Pride Parade takes place Sunday, Aug. 6.

Gordon Hardy, a co-founder of Vancouver’s Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s, is one of the four people behind the counter petition to BLM.

“What we wanted to accomplish is to make sure that the Vancouver Pride Society knows that there are a great many of us who support the inclusion of the police in the Pride Parade,” he said.

He said Black Lives Matter is entitled to march in the parade, protest as much as they like and express their opinion.

“What we object to is that they come along and start telling the rest of us in the community who can and cannot be in the parade.”

The petition Hardy helped launch says that the participation of police in the parade marks a recognition of the significant contribution of previous activists such as Jim Deva, Jim Trenholme and Malcolm Crane who started working with the first Gay and Lesbian/Police Liaison Committee in 1977 and into the 1980s. While acknowledging “historic and ongoing injustices against the black communities in major American and eastern Canadian cities,” the petition says the relationship between Vancouver police and the LGBTQ communities is different and reflects a “long history of positive engagement.”

An official from Black Lives Matter could not be reached for comment.