SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Pride Month and Black Lives Matter
June 16, 2020
Honourable senators, in the absence of Senator Wanda Bernard because of COVID restrictions, I am honoured to read her statement:
Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Pride Month and Black Lives Matter. Pride is a time to celebrate LGBTQ joy and freedom of sexual orientation and gender expression. Black Lives Matter is about freedom from slavery and systemic violence. As we engage with this quest for freedom, I bring your attention to two groups of people whose right to freedom is often taken away from them: Black transgender people and Black prisoners.
This year, Pride Month looks a lot different than usual because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We can still use this time to develop our allyship. In the midst of pandemic of COVID, the reality of the pandemic of racism has finally become more visible to the mainstream. We are seeing activism, advocacy and the elevation of Black voices demanding actual change. Many people are waking up to the realities of anti-Black racism in Canada, and what better time than Pride Month to emphasize that Black, queer and trans lives matter.
Yesterday, I read a letter released by the Halifax Examiner called “Black Lives Matter in Prison, too”, written by a group of Black prisoners. These prisoners explain their experience of being forgotten, being left out of this movement:
We end up serving even longer sentences because we are judged by the colour of our skin. We are accused of being gang members. We are punished for talking together. Our visitors are accused of bringing in contraband, so we tell our mothers not to come and see us. Guards antagonize us and then discipline us when we respond. There are no programs made for us. And when we go in front of an all-white parole board, they will not let us out.
These prisoners state, ”We have heard people say until all Black lives matter, no one’s life can matter. Until Black prisoner lives matter, can anyone be free?”
I am reminded of these words from Audre Lorde, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
When we think about the phrase ”Black Lives Matter,” we often only consider the lives of Black men and the current state of policing. These two unique experiences, that of Black prisoners and Black transgender people, are a priority as I consider how we are not free until all of us are free.
