In a bold act of solidarity, Fierté Fredericton Pride named Fredericton Palestine Solidarity (FPS) as Grand Marshall for their 2024 pride parade. Pride  has also announced that it has refused sponsorship from businesses or organizations listed on the Canadian BDS Coalition website, and will not permit those businesses to march in the parade. Military and arms manufacturers are also barred from marching in the parade, along with  the UNB administration. (UNB which is currently under pressure from students, staff, and faculty to divest from Israeli investments and partnerships - particularly those tied to cybersecurity and arms manufacturing - but has so far refused to meet to discuss those issues.

While there has been overwhelming support for Fierté Fredericton Pride’s initiative from within the queer community, there has also been some backlash, including calls for the City of Fredericton to reconsider its endorsement of Pride.  Much of the criticism includes the argument that choosing to honor and include a Palestine solidarity group is itself an act of antisemitism which will alienate and exclude Jewish LGBTQIA+ community members from participating in this year’s pride festival. 

We call on the City of Fredericton to show integrity when hearing these criticisms and to respect Pride’s long history of bold and often controversial political activism. The argument that endorsement of solidarity with Palestinians (in Fredericton and internationally) is antisemitic smears an entire people and is an example of anti-Palestinian racism. It also belies the fact that many Jews and Jewish queers are actively in solidarity with Palestine, including in Fredericton. Our queer movement in general, and Fierté Fredericton Pride in  particular, is an antiracist movement. Antisemitism is not tolerated at Pride.

Since its inception in the1960s our -queer movements have not prioritized corporate sponsorship or mere ideals of diversity. Queer pride has historically been a highly politicized movement rooted in specific demands to:

• Reject police violence and over-surveillance,
• React appropriately to public health emergencies,
• Protect the life, health, and dignity of people both locally and globally, regardless of their perceived worth

To claim that marching in solidarity with Palestinians risks making pride political is to  ignore the long history of Queer political organization. It also ignores the long and storied history of queer identities being specifically politicized - to the point where in very recent history “political” has often been used as shorthand for queer issues too controversial to discuss in polite company. Those of us who have been advocating for this community for many years are all too familiar with the way some issues are labeled political - or indeed, too politically controversial for polite society - as a means of erasing their participation from public life.

Over the past 10 months, we have witnessed an acceleration in rhetoric that suggests “Palestine” is synonymous with terrorism, violence, religious repression, and homophobia. This rhetoric is always racist, and usually also rooted in Islamophobia.

Queer Palestinians - of which there are many - deserve to be included and recognized at pride. Bearing witness to their suffering is not an act of antisemitism but rather an invitation to stand together in collective grief for countless lives cut short - including the family members of people in the city of Fredericton. That some members of our community see this as antisemitic hostility is disappointing - but that does not make their interpretation true. Any suggestion that the Israeli government’s campaign of destruction against Palestinian livelihood is inherently tied to Judaism should be examined with scrutiny and concern.

The choice to reject sponsorships from corporations linked to a wide-scale campaign of land theft, disenfranchisement, and mass killing of people in Palestine is directly aligned with the history of pride. No reasonable definition of “diversity and inclusion” requires the endorsement of specific businesses, nor does it require an open door to provide corporate public relations opportunities through participation in the pride parade.Queer inclusion has always meant respecting the collective dignity of human beings, not the inclusion of them as mere representatives of a larger corporate structure. When that corporation’s human rights record raises alarms over their willingness to align themselves with humanitarian atrocities, our collective dignity demands their exclusion.

We the undersigned strongly feel that Fierté Fredericton Pride’s 2024 programming should stand as-is.