Revisiting his own granular research that forms the backbone of the activist history Queer Progress: from Homophobia to Homonationalism, Toronto activist and education advocate Tim McCaskell will discuss queer politics in the period from the 1969 Omnibus to his first Gay Pride in 1974.
Photo by Charles Dobie onthebookshelves.com
Photo by Charles Dobie onthebookshelves.com
Participants will get an up- close look at the documents and mood of the period of early “gay liberation,” before the hegemony of Stonewall and the commercialism and police collaboration Topics discussed will include: how to look for community history in media and memory; the need for a broader social analysis to make sense of this history; queers and the police; and what the 1969 turning point did and did not accomplish for LGBTQ people in Toronto, and Canada at large.
Tim McCaskell is a long-time Toronto writer, activist and educator. He was a collective member of The Body Politic, Canada’s first national magazine for Lesbian and Gay Liberation from 1974 to 1986, chair of the Public Action Committee of the Right to Privacy Committee which fought back against police raids on gay baths in Toronto in the early 1980s, and part of the Simon Nkodi Anti-Apartheid Committee: Lesbians and Gays Against Apartheid in the late 80s. He was a founding member of AIDS ACTION NOW!, an activist group which won access to experimental treatments and funding for medications in the 1990s and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid after 2010. He is presently part of the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure. For more than twenty years McCaskell worked at the Toronto Board of Education, developing and delivering programs on racism, homophobia and sexual harassment for students and teachers. He received the City of Toronto Award of Merit for his human rights work in 1996. His most recent book, Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism, was published in 2016.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2019. 6:00-7:30pm
Doors open at 5:30pm and space is limited.
