Fierté Montréal: Sex Garage and F.A.G.S

In Montreal, Pride (or Fierté) falls on the first week of August and was, like Pride in the United States, originally inspired by a violent police raid and subsequent cop riots.

While in the 1970s, violent raids and harassment by vice squads - including outing people by publishing their names and photos in the newspapers or calling their employers - were common, by the 80s that kind of thing was more rare. The extreme response to the loft party in 1990 resulted in repeated protests in which the police reacted violently. But the protests were public:

“Sex Garage changed public attitudes toward us,” [Michael] Hendricks said. “Before the Sex Garage party, we were a bunch of perverts in an illegal boozecan. After the kiss-in, we were suddenly the victims of vicious police repression. We were now outing ourselves in public in broad daylight — and it changed people’s attitudes.

Much has changed in 34 years, and as we shall see, quite a few things have not. Here is the view from the main thoroughfare - St. Catherine's street - this last Saturday.

But Pride is a thing born of protest against injustice, and Montréal is no exception. Unbeknownst to me, because these people somehow still organize on Facebook [[1]], that evening there was another unauthorized event - La Rad Pride - organized by by the collective P!NK BLOC MTL.

Which came first - the two arrests or two broken windows - is kind of unimportant when we consider that property damage is not actually the same thing as violence. [[2]]

But this wasn't even the thing that dominated the news about Fierté Montréal. No, for that we need to talk about the march (défilé) on Sunday.

This was far from the first Pride parade this year to have unauthorized anti-genocide protestors disrupt it, but it was the largest I am aware of and was one that I directly witnessed. From The Gazette:

The Faction Anti-Génocidaire et Solidaire, for instance, a group identifying itself as being made up of “queers of conscience,” denounced Fierté Montreal, the organizer of Montreal Pride events, for being “complicit in Palestinian genocide.”

How did Faction Anti-Génocidaire et Solidaire [[3]] come to understand this? From Radio-Canada

« En acceptant les chars de parade d'organisations sionistes, des banques et des corporations, la Fierté offre une plateforme et légitimise la rhétorique raciste de ses partenaires »

Like Pride in Seattle, one of the sponsors is a bank (TD Bank) which provides financing to Lockheed Martin, among others. I didn't see nearly as many corporate/bank processions or booths as I have seen back in Seattle, but they were there, and it's one reason why the Trans Pride of neither city is at all associated with the larger pride organizations.

The group had already inserted itself just in front of the float with the mayor [[4]] and had marched in front of it when it reached my location.

When they did, they stopped. The entire area went from loud, boisterous celebration to nearly complete silent as they performed a die-in. The only noise was a recording of airstrikes and wailing.

It is unclear to me what happened to the protest after this. The local reporting suggests they were eventually forced on to the other half of the divided multi-lane street but there were no arrests or injuries.

I couldn't stay long. My partner was out of town and someone at home required attention after my long day away.

[[1]]: I guess it depends on your goals. If you want the state to know your names and immediately show up and be kettled by law enforcement, keep using Facebook. Or take a page out of the Columbia organizers and turn off your phone and talk in person. Yeah it's way harder

[[2]]: This is true, despite almost every effort by those in power to equate people to property in this regard. Such a notion would be at home in those eras with chattel slavery and serfdom

[[3]]: Radio-Canada correctly included their acronym, "...groupe Faction anti-génocidaire et solidaire (F.A.G.S)"

[[4]]: Valerie Plante is an urbanist that supports public housing, which automatically makes her superior to every single mayor of every city I've ever lived in, but she absolutely approved a sweep of the protest encampment formerly at McGill University