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So there's been kind of a TDOR debacle around town.
The folks organizing the local TDOR events wanted to start a march at the Ottawa police station and, when it was brought to their attention that a lot of the people who are remembered on TDOR are street-sexworkers of colour (IE people who face a shitload of violence from the police), basically said that if someone felt unsafe in the presense of police (due to being a sexworker, being street-involved, being of-colour, having experienced trans/queer-phobic crap from police in the past, etc) that was their problem (and not systemic at all...) and the event-organizers weren't about to change things up to accomodate/acknowledge any of this.
Which sucks.
A lot[1].
BUT. A couple of other folks decided that, in light of this problem, they would organize a demo with an alternate starting point.
And, yeah, there are Some People who are going "This is so divisive!" (mostly, from what I can tell, friends of the folks who organized the original problematic event). But, beyond that, it seems to be getting a lot of support. A way for people who aren't comfortable involving the police (and photo-ops) in this, who would still like to be able to publically mark TDOR.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160851957278283
Melanie of Ottawa and (I think) Deliriumfae and a couple of others are putting this one together.
This one feels... better to me. I just wanted to spread the word that it's out there.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] On the plus side, a lot of the folks who said "I can't in good conscience take part in an event that is ignoring so many of us" are opting to make donations to POWER instead so, if you were hoping for some kind of a silver lining, there it is.
The folks organizing the local TDOR events wanted to start a march at the Ottawa police station and, when it was brought to their attention that a lot of the people who are remembered on TDOR are street-sexworkers of colour (IE people who face a shitload of violence from the police), basically said that if someone felt unsafe in the presense of police (due to being a sexworker, being street-involved, being of-colour, having experienced trans/queer-phobic crap from police in the past, etc) that was their problem (and not systemic at all...) and the event-organizers weren't about to change things up to accomodate/acknowledge any of this.
Which sucks.
A lot[1].
BUT. A couple of other folks decided that, in light of this problem, they would organize a demo with an alternate starting point.
And, yeah, there are Some People who are going "This is so divisive!" (mostly, from what I can tell, friends of the folks who organized the original problematic event). But, beyond that, it seems to be getting a lot of support. A way for people who aren't comfortable involving the police (and photo-ops) in this, who would still like to be able to publically mark TDOR.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160851957278283
Melanie of Ottawa and (I think) Deliriumfae and a couple of others are putting this one together.
This one feels... better to me. I just wanted to spread the word that it's out there.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] On the plus side, a lot of the folks who said "I can't in good conscience take part in an event that is ignoring so many of us" are opting to make donations to POWER instead so, if you were hoping for some kind of a silver lining, there it is.