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There is power in a union.
May. 17th, 2015 10:36 pmThe Public Service Alliance of Canada (those nice folks who helped bring you the weekend, the long weekend, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, etc), also brought to Ottawa a free screening of Pride this afternoon.
So, after riding to Elgin Street and dropping in on The First Annual Majestic Family Fun Day: A Celebration of Family Diversity in Recognition of International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHTB) & Victoria Day for a bit, we rode down to the Mayfair and, in the company of many other people both willing and able to sing along with Solidarity Forever, watched a brilliantly acted, powerful, funny, defiantly unironic, shamelessly touching movie about urban queer kids in the UK in the 80s and the striking miners in Wales.
It was completely awesome, more due to than despite the fact that if it hadn't all happened pretty much exactly as the movie portrays it your suspension of disbelief would snap somewhere between the time Bronski Beat show up to play a benefit called Pits and Perverts and the point where the Miner's Union shows up en masse to march in the London Pride Parade in '85. (These days, unions - and everyone else - lines up to be in Pride Parades as a matter of community engagement/targeted marketing. Those days were not these days. This was three years before I began to come out, and five years before my first Pride, and even in 1990 in Toronto marching in the Pride parade involved equal chances of heatstroke and having to dodge small missiles.)
So, yeah, Pride. Go see it. it's awesome.
So, after riding to Elgin Street and dropping in on The First Annual Majestic Family Fun Day: A Celebration of Family Diversity in Recognition of International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHTB) & Victoria Day for a bit, we rode down to the Mayfair and, in the company of many other people both willing and able to sing along with Solidarity Forever, watched a brilliantly acted, powerful, funny, defiantly unironic, shamelessly touching movie about urban queer kids in the UK in the 80s and the striking miners in Wales.
It was completely awesome, more due to than despite the fact that if it hadn't all happened pretty much exactly as the movie portrays it your suspension of disbelief would snap somewhere between the time Bronski Beat show up to play a benefit called Pits and Perverts and the point where the Miner's Union shows up en masse to march in the London Pride Parade in '85. (These days, unions - and everyone else - lines up to be in Pride Parades as a matter of community engagement/targeted marketing. Those days were not these days. This was three years before I began to come out, and five years before my first Pride, and even in 1990 in Toronto marching in the Pride parade involved equal chances of heatstroke and having to dodge small missiles.)
So, yeah, Pride. Go see it. it's awesome.
“You have worn our badge, ‘Coal not Dole’, and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will pin your badge on us; we will support you.
