By Emma Paget
In Ottawa on August 24, a diverse group of activists led by Queers for Palestine (Q4P) blocked and disrupted the pride parade organized by Capital Pride, making several demands related to solidarity with Palestine.
Since then, reporting and discourse on this action has been dominated by corporate media and reactionary voices which have no interest or stake in the liberation of either Palestine or Queer people. Furthermore, many of these voices, including Capital Pride itself, have spread harmful misinformation about the action, seeking to drive a wedge between those fighting for Queer rights and those fighting for the liberation of Palestine.
As a trans woman who participated in this action with the Young Communist League, I believe it necessary to discuss the context in which it took place.
Last year, prior to Ottawa’s pride parade and festival in late August, Capital Pride released a statement condemning Israeli human rights abuses in Gaza and the pinkwashing which is frequently used to justify it. This statement was by no means radical. It did not accuse Israel of genocide, an accusation supported by Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, a United Nations special committee and countless other groups. The statement also included a simultaneous condemnation of the October 7 attacks.
Nonetheless, Zionist groups, corporate sponsors and various levels of government quickly leveled accusations of antisemitism at Capital Pride and rescinded their support. Those who refused to participate in or support Capital Pride due to this statement included Loblaws, Giant Tiger, the City of Ottawa and mayor Mark Suttcliffe, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Bank of Canada, the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, and several hospitals and school boards among others.
Despite this backlash, the pride parade and festivities went ahead, with an atmosphere that felt decidedly less corporate and more political than the previous prides I had attended in Ottawa. People wore keffiyehs, flew Palestinian flags and held signs saying things like “pride is a protest” and “thank you for keeping pride political.” Ottawa’s pride in 2024 may have been less well funded and organized than usual, but it more than made up for that in passion and a palpable excitement at the feeling of Queer people taking back a protest that had been turned into an opportunity for corporate pinkwashing and marketing.
For many Queer people who had long felt alienated by the presence of banks, police, Zionists and ruling-class politicians at these events, the future of pride in Ottawa looked to be a positive one. It was certainly not one without challenges or difficulties, but it was still moving in a hopeful direction.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. This summer, Capital Pride quietly removed their statement on Palestine from their website. The organization’s executive director Callie Metler has claimed the removal of this statement was simply a part of a website update. Speaking to CBC, she stated “every year, we refresh our online environment, and we focus on new issues and new concerns in our community.”
Given the backlash which Capital Pride faced for their statement on Palestine, and the fact that in the year since the genocide in Palestine has not abated but in fact intensified, it’s hard to believe that this comes down to nothing more than a website update.
This cowardly move by Capital Pride did not go unnoticed by the Queer community, and as a result the Queers for Palestine attempted to negotiate with Capital Pride to commit to the position they had outlined in their now deleted statement. Unfortunately, it seems Capital Pride was uninterested in solidarity with the Palestinian people if said solidarity did not benefit them, leaving us to wonder if it could ever have been called solidarity at all.
This brings us to August 2025 and this year’s pride weekend. With the blessing of the parade’s grand marshal Patience Plush, Q4P and allies like Independent Jewish Voices and the Young Communist League were set to lead the parade, making it clear that the Queer community stands against genocide, even if Capital Pride will not.
We halted the parade in front of Parliament, where we made our demands: most notably for Capital Pride to endorse PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions). There were speeches from grand marshal Patience Plush, Q4P organizer Masha Davidović, and other community members and organizers, as well as chants of “pride was an intifada!” Volunteers walked along the length of the parade, handing out flyers explaining the demands and the reason for the disruption.
Disappointingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, rather than meet the demands of the Queer community they are supposed to represent, Capital Pride tried to ignore Q4P’s demands while also deflecting blame for the parade’s disruption away from themselves. Capital Pride distracted and deceived Q4P organizers with farcical “negotiations,” making it appear that an agreement would be reached to have the Q4P and Capital Pride contingents march down different streets, before abruptly cancelling the parade. A later Instagram post from Capital Pride blamed Queers for Palestine for being “unwilling to engage in a good faith conversation.”
Since then, the media has attempted to portray this sequence of events as a conflict between the Queer community and Palestinian activists, in an attempt to drive a wedge between the two.
This was in no way the case, and it is extremely important to make this fact clear: the contingent which blocked the parade and made demands for Palestine were themselves Queer. Furthermore, this action was carried out with the approval and participation of the parade’s grand marshal Patience Plush, who has since then described herself as being extremely disappointed with Capital Pride. Queer community leaders such as Fae Johnstone were also present and participating. This was not, as the media has portrayed it, a conflict between the Queer and Palestinian communities, but rather the exact opposite – a powerful display of solidarity between the two.
Despite Capital Pride’s cancellation of the officially organized parade, Q4P still led a march down bank street along the parade’s originally planned route, proving that pride isn’t police, the military, corporate sponsorships or government support. Pride is the people and, as many could be heard chanting that day, “the people united will never be defeated.”
[Photo: Brent Patterson]
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