"URGENT APPEAL: CONTACT YOUR COUNCILOR Next Tuesday and Wednesday June 11 and 12, Toronto City Council will be dealing with two important issues. The first is the approval of the city’s Anti-discrimination policy. This policy has been held up for a year as Israel lobby groups unsuccessfully attempted to add language that would ban the use of the term “Israeli apartheid” on city property or at public events hosted by groups that receive city grants. City staff and lawyers have repeatedly advised that there is no legal foundation to do this. Nevertheless, Mayor Ford’s executive committee has proposed a number of redundant, confusing and vague amendments to the policy that they still hope can be used to ban criticism of Israel. The second issue is funding for the 2013 Pride festival. For the third consecutive year, Israel lobby groups are attempting to block the city’s cultural grant to Pride because of the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the annual Pride parade. QuAIA’s participation has been found to be within Pride’s mandate, not hateful or discriminatory, and not in violation any city policy or law. This year, the Israel lobby is enlisting the support of right wing “Christian fundamentalist” groups in their campaign to pressure city councilors. Such groups have always opposed any kind of Pride funding. The stakes are high. Please call or write your councilor today. Ask them to approve the new City Anti-discrimination Policy without amendments. This policy should not be used to shield foreign governments from criticism for human rights abuses, or to undermine freedom of expression. Ask them to approve Pride Toronto’s Cultural Funding grant without further conditions. The Pride festival has included the expression of diverse community politics for the last 30 years. The festival is important to the city both culturally and economically. Pride deserves city support. Thanks for your help. Please feel free to forward this message to anyone you think might be interested. Tim For QUAIA To see a map of Toronto Wards and find your councilor information click app.toronto.ca/wards/jsp/wards.jsp To see the proposed amendments to the anti-discrimination policy click app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2013.EX32.1 To see the Council agenda if you would like to be there to support these items click app.toronto.ca/tmmis/decisionBodyProfile.do?function=doPrepare&decisionBodyId=261#Meeting-2013.CC36 " Tim McCaskell
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:26:23 +0000
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