Open Letter to the Toronto District School Board

Update June 19, 2019: One of our readers contacted TDSB, and was told that Phillip-Ness Thomas no longer works for them. We have not verified this information.

Pride season is an opportunity for our many allies and friends to celebrate and show support to our diverse LGBTQ2SIA+ communities. Many organizations use Pride celebrations to demonstrate their organization’s stated values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

As always, it was lovely to see our friends from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE Ontario) reflecting the spirit of Pride this year. CUPE Ontario in particular has gone beyond that, encouraging all its members across the province to show up to their community’s local Pride events, and to show solidarity in the face of the rising presence of far-right hateful agitators who have been bolder, louder, and more abusive to our communities this year.

Therefore, we are disappointed Phillip Ness Thomas, Toronto District School Board employee and member of CUPE Local 4400, chose (again) to attend a Pride celebration with the intention to cause disruption, to harass, and to abuse our communities.

June 17, 2018: Phillip Ness Thomas at Pride Hamilton. Source: CBC News

 

Phillip Ness Thomas is an apparent ring-leader of so-called “street preachers” disrupting Pride events across Ontario with hate-filled rhetoric on the weekends, while working as a TDSB employee during the week. We are strongly concerned about his presence on TDSB property, and the impact this may have on TDSB students, parents, faculty, and staff, the school community, and community partners. His presence and employment at TDSB conflicts with the TDSB’s equity policy, stating its workforce should, “at all levels, reflects, understands, and responds to a diverse population”, and does not support a “Positive School Climate, where all members of a school community feel safe, included, and accepted”.

 

As stated in the Toronto District School Board’s equity policy, “students, staff, parents/guardians, caregivers, and community can voice concern, make reports, and lodge complaints if subjected and or witnesses to Harassment, or discrimination or a target of Bias, Prejudice or Hate”. We encourage anyone who has been subjected to this hate to raise their concerns with the Toronto District School Board’s Human Rights Office.

The Toronto Pride parade marked Ness Thomas’ fourth attendance at a Pride festival this year, so far. He and a number of cohorts began with a heinous display of hate in Dunnville ON on May 26 and continued on to Barrie, Hamilton, and Toronto (and have plans to go to London in July). They were joined by two notorious American hate preachers whose homophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric have landed them on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group watchlist.

 

May 26, 2018: Phillip Ness Thomas in Dunnville, Ontario collecting footage for the propoganda of infamous American hate propogandaist, Ruben Israel Chavez.

 

While we do not wish to give any air-time to the abuse that this group wishes to spread, we emphasize these actions because they have crossed lines into the territory of hate speech and assault.

We stand against all that these hate groups represent. We urge everyone to stand up against this hate in our communities, workplaces, and unions.

In Solidarity and Pride,
Hamilton Queers Against Hate

This message was written and published on Facebook, June 27, 2018 by Hamilton Queers Against Hate. Used with permission.