You can sit (in) with us!

Think what you like about the demands made by Black Lives Matter – Toronto, the honoured group in 2016’s Pride Toronto parade. (I think the list ranges from “of course” to unfair; that’s my cis white male opinion.)

But their mid-parade 30-some-minute sit-in near the media area was a perfectly appropriate piece of street theatre. Perhaps even a welcome gesture, if you don’t factor in the increased rates of heat stroke and sunburn along the route and the risk of making the Prancing Elites late for their performance.

Politics in the Pride parade? Who would have thunk? But just how did Prime Minister Justin pass the time waiting for the Black Lives Matter sit-in to end?

Parades—Toronto’s Pride parades in particular—are platforms for speech, performance, self expression, unexplainable dancing styles and wardrobe choices, community awareness, celebration, politics and everything in between. The whole thing is a jumble of performances that may or may not make sense or be effective individually or as a whole.

The Pride parade has never been curated, though there have always been sources of tension about what should be included and what shouldn’t be.

To the extent the parade adopts a theme, enforcing it is untenable. Who wanted to police the “Bursting with Fruit Flavours” theme back in 2004? (This year’s theme, You Can Sit with Us!, was clever, but perhaps unbearable for nonconfirmists who don't want or need the cool kids’ permission to take a seat.) If a parade entry is uplifting and inspiring, that’s fantastic. If it’s challenging or even nonsensical, that’s fine too. This year’s edition provided my most intense and most meaningful parade-watching experience so far. When the names of the people murdered in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub—just plain little signs with names and ages—were carried down Yonge Street, I cried. I didn’t want to or expect to, but I did.

In 2004, the Raelian group was required to cover parts of signs featuring a picture of the Pope (JP II) and text like, “Official sponsor of AIDS.” Though naked marchers were arrested in 2003, they have been for the most part welcome in the parade, despite years when they were asked if they really, really, really had to bare all. For seven years, the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) was the wound in the parade that would not heal. People wanted them out and they wouldn't leave. After years of debate and acrimony, Pride ended up creating a dispute-resolution process that affirmed that QuAIA could march, despite real threats to revoke Pride’s city funding if they were not given the boot.

Perhaps the biggest get-out-of-jail-free card handed to Pride executive director Mathieu Chantelois when he took over in 2015 was QuAIA’s announcement that they weren’t interested in marching anymore.  Whew! Controversy off the table! Done and done! Let the good times roll!

And then the sit-in.

What’s not suitable for a Pride parade? My first test is: Is the entry composed of queer people expressing something, or allies expressing something queer? For Black Lives Matter, the answer is most definitely yes.

I have written before about how boring the Pride Toronto parade has become—and remains. So the second and final test: Is it boring?

Well, many spectators would say that standing in the hot sun watching the same float or, more likely, the same uncostumed marching contingent of bankers for a half hour while a protest and negotiations take place is a textbook definition of boring. But only if they have failed to let their minds ponder larger issues and themes.

Watching a parade is usually about catching quick glimpses of eye candy. We love a float because it’s creative or the people on it are sexy and talented and fun to watch—for a few seconds. But when those seconds expand to minutes, we grow antsy. First, we don’t know what’s going on, and complain about the quality of marshalling.

Then someone says there’s a sit-in. Now the event is theatre. It’s not random bits of delight anymore. It’s a larger, more cohesive narrative that someone has brought to the cacophony. A story has been imposed.

This show is not in front of you. It’s all around you, like in plays where the actors leave the stage to wander amidst and interact with the audience. In this case, not literally. But suddenly the actors have framed your experience in a way that’s completely unexpected, that brings you into the story. Like a piece of conceptual art, the sit-in was a frame focusing attention.

Focusing on what? Firstly, I suppose, on our feelings. Intrigue, annoyance, validation, indignation, solidarity, you name it. Radical art means to get in your head. For parade watchers, it was boring non-boringness or non-boring boredom. It was as boring as the conversations we were having as it unfolded. That, much more than the presence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, made the 2016 parade unique and memorable—a true achievement.

Whether spectators took the 30 minutes to think of the experience of Black Lives in Toronto, Canada and around the world, whether they thought about how Black Lives are policed or their relationship to Pride Toronto… maybe they didn’t. But a frame of reference was created, regardless of what spectators saw in it.

That’s theatre, and theatre belongs in a parade. Hence the ostentatious TV-camera-ready feathered pen Chantelois was given to sign the list of demands. It’s a stylized prop in a show within a show.

Politically, the sit-in was astute. Maybe not in the hot sweaty moment, but in the days and weeks of debate that will follow. Black Lives Matter­ – Toronto has created a large-scale conceptual frame for their issues. They turned something as ephemeral as a parade into something longer lasting. What’s the point of being given the power that comes with being honoured and not doing anything with it?

Some gay men and others have described the sit-in like it was a hostile act. “LGBT people would never stop the Caribana parade to protest homophobia.” Um, why not? Well, we got beat to it and would have to think of something else. The sit-in is a hard act to follow.

It’s not war—people get killed in those—it’s play, a much preferable and more parade-friendly substitute. Something can be playful and serious at the same time.

Yet there’s a larger political risk for Black Lives Matters organizers.

’Cause, when you give theatre, you usually get theatre back. 

If you don't like the political script, why not do a rewrite?

When people say they don’t think Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is up to the job of being PM—that he’s a lightweight or gaffe-prone, for example—I always think about how, even if they have formed this opinion on their own, it feeds into and is shaped by the Conservative party’s preferred narrative. Running the country is about competency, it goes, and Stephen Harper, whatever his other faults, is surely more competent than Justin Trudeau.

Competency is a tough narrative to compete with, especially considering that Canadians are a particular risk-adverse people. But you could reframe the question, “Who would be the best prime minister?” as something like, “Who has the best vision for the country?” Skills can be learned, attracted, appointed, bought or rented; vision, not so much. If Justin Trudeau were able to articulate a cohesive and attractive vision for Canada, Canadians might have confidence that he could call in the right people to make it happen. What does our future look like? Who are we in the world? Can we rise above pure politics to bring the country together? Of course, you can't just ask these questions to articulate a vision, you have to provide some sort of answer to them.

That’s why the Liberal support of Bill C-51, known as the Anti-Terrorism Act, seems particular odd and self-sabotaging. On a spectrum from “Protect Civil Liberties” to “Maximize Security,” the bill leans toward the latter, at least in public perception. And that direction seems to contradict the Liberal values of a country built on trust and reason rather than fear. Trudeau’s explanation of his support for the bill was sharply devoid of any philosophizing or even any real emotion.

“We are hopeful that the government is serious about reaching across the aisle to keep Canadians safe, while protecting our rights and our values. There are concerns with this bill, and we hear them. But we need to do what we can to keep Canadians safe. And I believe that many of the concerns with this bill will be addressed through Parliamentary oversight,” he said in his February remarks. “There are gaps in this bill, including on oversight and mandatory reviews. And we in the Liberal Party will offer amendments to address these gaps.”

Gaps, oversight, review, amendments? These words are absolutely beholding to the Conservative’s competency narrative. Trudeau is claiming the Liberals can be more fussy that the Conservatives if you give them a chance; the devil is in the details; civil liberty is important, but then again, so is security. His words, and even his way of defining the issue, neither build on the established Liberal brand at its best (the country we want, not the best political compromise we can manage) nor offer a new manifestation of the Liberal brand under Trudeau.

There might narratives other than vision that Justin Trudeau will use to get people to stop comparing his level-headedness to Harper’s. But Trudeau has so far failed to present one, so busy is he following the Conservatives script.