Reportback on Hamilton’s Abolitionist Pride
Reportback on Hamilton’s Abolitionist Pride
Report on autonomous and abolitionist Pride march in so-called Hamilton, ON. Originally posted to North Shore Counter-Info. On August 26th, the night before Hamilton’s official Pride event, a bunch of rowdy queers marched through the city’s North End in an autonomous, abolitionist march. The event s...
Excerpt:
Making a ton of noise (“Bottoms! Tops! We all hate cops!”), we took Barton Street for a block and then turned back north to reach the abandoned city housing complex at James and Strachan and the tent city that has sprung up around its perimeter, where a person who lives in an encampment briefly addressed the crowd.
We then went down the hill to Bay Front Park, where the mainstream Pride event would happen. That event — with its fenced perimeter, its security guards, its bag searches, and its cops — really seems like a caricature of what happens if you don’t believe that queers have the ability to keep each other safe. Yes, past Pride celebrations in Hamilton have been shitshows, but they have been shitshows where queers fought and won.