Reportback on the Pride Disruption

For a second year in a row, autonomous militants connected to the decentralized Faction Against Genocide, in Solidarity (F.A.G.S.) network disrupted the corporate pride parade, in response to the call to escalation coming from the Palestinian Resistance. Pride Montréal continues its complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, its corporate cooptation of queer struggles, and its shameful collaboration with SPVM (Montreal Police).

The day after RadPride, which faced severe police brutality, and while Wild Pride marched for an anti-colonial queer and trans struggle to delegitimise Fierté Montréal, the militants felt a moral duty to act. We join a wider movement of queer for Palestine disrupting Pride in “Vancouver”, Tkaronto, Amsterdam and worldwide.  In opposition to the Zionist presence at the parade, and to its collaboration with the police, the army, and corporate interests, the protestors disrupted Pride Montreal.

Around 3PM, about 30 protestors made their way into the parade to block the Ga’ava and CIJA float. These Zionist groups claim to be the representatives of the queer Jewish community. Anti-Zionist Jews, who were notably among us in denouncing the Zionist entity’s genocide, resolutely disavow the cooptation of queer struggles by the pinkwashing of the colonial state. We denounce the space given blindly by Quebec mainstream media to CIJA’s direcor of “communications” (propaganda), Julien Corona, who constantly cries oppression and anti-semitism, while not even being Jewish himself.

The protestors succeeded in blocking the parade and its Zionist contingent at multiple moments, and truly disrupted its activities by their mere presence, as well as by the autonomous initiative of a comrade who sprayed them with nettle extract (a non-harmful natural substance that stinks like hell).

We consider this action a success. We were able to get the message across that our pride is and will always be wild, and all this with the enthusiastic support of the majority of the parade’s spectators. Fierté Montréal has once again demonstrated that it prefers to deploy riot cops to intimidate queers of conscience than to listen to the voices of the community. One person was violently tackled and arrested, but thankfully no serious injuries were sustained.