Councillor urges end to Pride funding after filming Dyke March

Giorgio Mammoliti and his camcorder want to axe city funding for Pride Week.

The city councillor says he captured an anti-Israeli group chanting the controversial phrase “Israeli Apartheid” during Saturday’s Dyke Parade.

“I see this as cockiness, I see this as a slap in the face to City Hall and I see this as a slap in the face to taxpayers in this city,” Mammoliti said after the parade. “This councillor does not want them to get funded this year. I will be seeing whether the mayor agrees with me.”

Pride co-chair Francisco Alvarez said his organization would go bankrupt without the city’s $130,000 in grants, and might lose their licence to hold the 2014 World Pride festival.

Earlier this year, Mammoliti demanded a letter from Pride organizers to guarantee the controversial activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid would be barred from the festival. He suggested city funding, which amounts to about a quarter of the festival’s budget, should be contingent on the group’s exclusion.

Tensions were quelled when the group itself promised not to participate. However, Mammoliti vowed to film the parade when the group Dykes and Trans People for Palestine advertised it would march holding banners and signs with the term “Israeli Apartheid.”

“They may have been a new group but they were shouting and they were chanting and the slogans of ‘Israeli Apartheid’ were all there. I got it all on tape,” Mammoliti said of the group of 25. “There was no attempt whatsoever from organizers to stop them from being there.”

Organizers said they did not see the controversial group.

“Pride has done everything it can to comply with the letter of the law and to comply with every single policy that the city prescribed,” Alvarez said. “We need to see that proof — until that time, we can’t really respond.”

Fellow city councillor Shelley Carroll tweeted a photo of her colleague at the parade.

“There’s the video camera. Pretty sure you paid for it taxpayers. Respect for taxpayers,” she wrote.

Mammoliti is one of Mayor Rob Ford’s staunchest allies. Ford has not attended any Pride events and said he won’t attend Sunday’s flagship parade because he wants to spend time with family at a Muskoka cottage.

“When the mayor won’t even attend, I’m kind of surprised that this councillor feels that it’s a good use of his time to prowl around with a camera,” Alvarez said.

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Source: Toronto Star