Thank you so much to everyone who signed and supported our petition, and for waving and honking horns during our City Hall protest on May 19th! Though Mayor Tom Dyas has unfortunately chosen not to act on cancelling the Jordan Peterson event, and has not seriously considered our claims of safety concerns for Kelowna residents, we received over 1,500 signatures on this petition, and this is not a trivial result!
Coverage of our May 19th City Hall protest:
https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/427706/Small-protest-against-Jordan-Peterson-at-Kelowna-city-hall
We are not the only BC town that has been standing against Jordan Peterson’s bigoted hate. Victoria’s petition received over 2,600 signatures and it inspired this Kelowna petition. Meanwhile in Vancouver, some meaningful public statements were issued. University of Fraser Valley’s (UFV) Faculty and Staff Association president Greg Mather issued a statement condemning Jordan Peterson’s lecture at the Abbotsford Centre. He stated that “while this is by no means a UFV sanctioned event, we are deeply concerned for the holistic safety of our UFV community members to have this speaker so close to our campus doors. We understand that the hate that he speaks and promotes causes real harm to people and we want anyone who might be on campus that day to be aware of this event and its impact.”
The City of Vancouver’s civic theatres department manager, Sandra Singh sent a memo to city council to notify them that she was reminding promoter Live Nation of their contractual obligation to "comply with the Criminal Code and B.C. Human Rights Code". Similarly, the Vancouver City Hall Communications department stated that "future bookings by any performer, including Peterson, will be evaluated to ensure compliance with civic guidelines and legal requirements".
https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/bc-news/university-association-warns-members-about-jordan-petersons-abbotsford-lecture-7017086
Here in Kelowna, me and my co-organizers reached out to the City of Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas and council with our concern for the impact of Jordan Peterson’s May 26th event on the safety of marginalized communities. I also had an 80 minute call with councillor Ron Cannan where we discussed many different types of bigotry affecting our communities, and how we each see them. I appreciated Councillor Cannan taking this time with me, but he held his ground and repeatedly cited the Book of Genesis’ take on God creating only “man and woman”. We held their feet to the fire on their duty to act on the 2022 Kelowna Community Safety Plan, which highlights the matter of bigoted hatred as a community safety priority. We reminded them of Section 15 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which establishes equality of all Canadian citizens as a fundamental legal principle. Because of Ron Cannan’s references to Christianity and the apparently large number of Christians supporting Jordan Peterson, we also reminded the Mayor and councillor Ron Cannan about the real love that Jesus Christ taught. Jesus did not write the Bible or the book of Genesis. Jesus taught to love thy neighbour as thyself. If you believe the story of the gospel, it’s not a huge leap to say that what Jesus was actually executed for was standing against oppression of marginalized people.
Read the 2022 Kelowna Community Safety Plan here:
https://kelownapublishing.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=37265
We’ve learned some things by putting ourselves on the front line of hate in this town. At least 8 different news articles were published about our petition, I shared the petition and protests with all the local subreddits, and I had an interview on Vancouver Coop Radio’s show GenderQueeries. As soon as our statements went out and media coverage started, white supremacists, homophobes and transphobes started harassing me and my co-organizers in the comments of our Facebook posts. Jordan Peterson himself caught wind of the news and tweeted on May 8th that “I've been cancelled by better people than this sorry lot. Virtue-signaling censorious narcissists”. For starters, this message from JP demonstrated direct malpractice in issuing a DSM diagnosis via tweet, but it became obvious that his real intention was to use this tweet as a dog whistle to release the hounds on us.
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1655624556889948161
We experienced threats of violence and much more harassment after this tweet from Mr. Peterson. We also heard people responding and reassuring Mr. Peterson that he had nothing to worry about because Kelowna is the last place he would ever be cancelled. I subsequently experienced multiple fake FB accounts trying to scam me, as well as real people in my friends network sharing my photos and other info online to “dox” me and coordinate other kinds of online attacks on me. I even had an old high school friend show his true colors in mocking my campaign messaging, which brought me full circle to remembering that he was raised by white supremacists in Lake Country and he had brought actual fascist ideas and symbolisms into our group of friends back in those formative days. Another realization was that people in both the downtown and Pandosy Village areas were dedicating serious effort to tearing down our posters. We confirmed with the City of Kelowna’s Communications department that the city does not tear down posters like this, and that it was clearly individuals acting on their own will. To see the ugly, white supremacist, misogynist, transphobic side of Kelowna raising its head so strongly and to see the indifference of the police, Mayor and council was eye-opening for us. This activism made different aspects of bigoted hate in Kelowna more visible to us than it ever had been, and this was a great insight.
We also learned that the Kelowna RCMP do not take online harassment seriously, even when people sent messages that threatened our safety. When I called the RCMP to arrange for an officer to be present for our protests and informed them of the abuse we were receiving, I was told that there was no ability to plan this ahead of time and I’d have to arrange it on the day of the event. Then when I called on the day of our May 19th protest, the RCMP reiterated that online threats were very common and no concern of theirs, so they wouldn’t be dedicating an officer to stay onsite with us
With these insight validating the longstanding rumours of Kelowna being a hotbed of white supremacy, the lack of action from the Mayor and council, and the negligence of the RCMP, we knew that we were only scratching the surface. We were receiving a small taste of the fear, isolation and general oppression that marginalized people like trans and indigenous people experience here. It broke our hearts and we decided that we would have to be the change that we want to see here. We went to work with constructing a new online platform called “Healing Hate in the Okanagan” at https://healinghate.ca.
We welcome you all to continue this conversation, and share your voices. Please join us in making healinghate.ca a representative and useful resource for all people in the Okanagan who care about healing bigoted hate! We envision this website as a place where all concerned citizens may find a hub of relevant local articles, news, events, educational resources. We also have a moderated forum to facilitate open dialog, debate, and the sharing of ideas and wisdom about anti-bigotry activism.
Please also join us this Friday evening at 5:30pm, May 26th at City Park for a humble community forum. At this event we will hear each other’s experiences in facing bigotry, hear from marginalized people, hear about other organizations and campaigns, learn and practice some healing techniques and to help build community around the healinghate.ca platform.
See the event details here:
https://fb.me/e/JcqYY0df
Thank you and take care of yourselves!
Yours truly,
Brent Forder