“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963”)
It has been my experience and careful observation that a growing number of organizations in the local Niagara region espouse the virtues of diversity, equity, and inclusion but monumentally fail in their delivery. These upper and lower-tier municipal governments and municipally-owned enterprises regularly and emphatically pat themselves on the back for their cagey exploration of policies around ‘lowering barriers to access’ and having discussions about ‘systemic or institutional reform’ while often failing to ever include any actual trans or queer voices in their gaudy corporate boardrooms. Unsurprisingly, their lavish mahogany doors remained shuttered, voices unheard, as the choir of self-congratulatory praise crescendos into an anti-climactic status quo.
It should be self-evident to any casual observer that one cannot be “inclusive” when the oppressively heavy executive doors remain battened down to the very community these organizations pretend to represent. Talking about us as opposed to with us is quite different. There can be no change, no progress if transgender individuals remain occluded and if we are denied the exigencies of opportunity.
In the last few years, I have seen too many intelligent, compassionate, and driven people in my community institutionally prohibited from participating in programs and committees ostensibly created to be “inclusive.” In the place of marginalized voices with something valuable to contribute, privileged autocrats with no lived experience plan strategies to ameliorate the lives they omit.
If inclusion is a core belief of an organization, and in my experience, rarely is it ever, these governmental and corporate leaders must include and embody the trans experience by imbibing trans and queer voices in the discussion. Hear us; promote us to positions where we can effect meaningful change; anything short of that is just doublespeak.
We merit being heard; we ought to be heard.
“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”
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This is not an argument that Canada is Mississippi in 1964—but no society arrives at that point by accident. The same dynamics are visible here at home. They surface in the normalization of hateful rhetoric online and in public spaces across Canada, including here in Niagara. Those advancing this rhetoric often insist they are merely…
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Sabrina Constance 