{"id":24626,"date":"2019-09-05T19:22:27","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T23:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24626"},"modified":"2019-09-12T17:21:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T21:21:18","slug":"york-pride-turns-message-of-hate-into-awareness-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/york-pride-turns-message-of-hate-into-awareness-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"York Pride turns message of hate into awareness opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A message of hate, delivered anonymously to young members\nof York Pride last week, has been turned into an opportunity to teach members\nof the public about the importance of reporting hate crimes to local police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, August 23, members of York Pride were shocked\nto find an explicit, hateful voicemail left by a man on their Youth Line. The\nprofanity-laced voicemail, which was posted to social media by the group in its\nentirety, not only ridiculed the group for the work they were doing in York\nRegion for the LGBTQ+ community, but threatened violence in the workplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis person made several attempts, seven in total, [to\nleave a message],\u201d says Jacob Gal of York Pride, noting the individual first\ntried to leave a message around 10.30 p.m. on their Media Relations line,\nbefore bouncing around to their Youth Line. \u201cWhen the message came in, I had a\nquick talk with our core member, Brianne, who also coordinates the Youth Group\nwith me, before we decided to report this. Obviously with calls like that, and\nthe number of incidents that happen in Downtown Toronto with people being beat\nup on transit or walking the streets holding hands, we do see physical violence\nhappen throughout, whether it is in our Region or just around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen someone can hate so much, there are physical\nconsequences that come from that. When a message like this, when someone is\nsuggesting people should be shot or pissed on, the fact that someone is [threatening\nto] come into an office, that definitely raised some eyebrows and was something\nthat shouldn\u2019t be ignored. When we ignore things like this, that is when we\nmiss opportunities to potentially stop something from happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t know what to interpret from this, but we\nthought the first step was trying to ensure that people can still feel safe and\ncomfortable, and know our core members weren\u2019t going to be in harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

York Pride reported the call to York Regional Police last\nTuesday and they quickly sprang into action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police say after the incident was reported, it was\ninvestigated by trained hate crime investigators. While the suspect was\nidentified, no charges have been laid at this time, said Constable Laura\nNicolle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYork Regional Police will not tolerate hate in any form\nand we will thoroughly investigate any incidents that are reported to us,\u201d she\nsaid. \u201cThese type of incidents and hateful expressions are incredibly hurtful,\ncertainly to everyone that was targeted here, but also, to all of us working or\nliving in York Region that are proud of how inclusive this region is.\n This incident serves as a further reminder that the work being by, and\nwith, our partners in all of our diverse communities is crucial to ensure that\nthe message is clear, there is no place for any expressions of hate in York\nRegion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe sometimes wonder how intense people are going to go\nwith their homophobia,\u201d adds Mr. Gal. \u201cWe can respect we have freedom of speech\nhere in Canada and people are absolutely willing to have their own opinion. We\nknow that people don\u2019t have to be friends with the people they don\u2019t like and\nthey don\u2019t mean to necessarily be around people they don\u2019t like, but I think\none thing we do strive to do is create some education for some sharing that\npeople would at least have the decency to be respectful, meaning that we\u2019re not\nphysically hurting people, we\u2019re not emotionally hurting people, we\u2019re keeping\nthe things that hurt people to ourselves and just living our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople have some very strong views about this (LGBTQ)\ncommunity. It is very important that even though we have a government that\nspeaks about being inclusive and we\u2019re a country built on people that respect\npeople, there are a lot of people that have very strict views on the fact they\nare not cool with this and the hate is there \u2013 it is just very hidden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By coming forward with what they experienced last week,\nYork Pride is hoping to break the stigma that keeps this hate hidden,\ndiscouraging possible victims from reporting their experience to the\nauthorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a bit of a challenge in our system when people\ndon\u2019t report hate crimes or things that can be seen as barriers to the\ncommunity,\u201d says Mr. Gal. \u201cThis is an opportunity to educate people. The reason\nwhy we have the Pride Festival and some people just see it as people wanting to\nwave flags in people\u2019s faces and agitate people, some people just don\u2019t\nunderstand that not everybody has the ability to be open and be able to express\nthemselves as easily as someone else does and doesn\u2019t see the true meaning of\nwhy we have organizations that are constantly working with youth and adults to\nmove forward and provide education, resources, social resources and essential\nhealth resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have quite a bit of work to do to tell people that\nthis is about building meaningful relationships. When we get messages like\nthis, it worries us because we don\u2019t know what the threats out there. We can\u2019t\nlive in isolation or fear, but we know there are people out there who sometimes\ndon\u2019t generally agree with the community. How far are they going to go to\nshowcase their hate? That was a really concerning thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A message of hate, delivered anonymously to young members of York Pride last week, has been turned into an opportunity to teach members of the public about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6pc","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-09 15:35:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}