Most of Pride's membership has agreed to endorse demands made by Black Lives Matter Toronto when they stopped the 2016 Pride parade, but no one is sure what this means for the future of police participation — including the police.

The demands included removing police floats and booths from all marches, parades and community spaces.

The vote was held during Pride’s annual general meeting Tuesday night.

Newly-elected Pride board member Akio Maroon said Wednesday night that although the board hasn’t even had a chance to meet and discuss the next steps, Maroon personally intends to honour the membership’s wishes moving forward.

“(In my opinion) the board takes its direction from the membership, and the membership has been very clear on where and what they want the board to do … a complete follow-through on Black Lives Matter’s demands,” Maroon said.

“…The logistics of how that is done, that’s going to be something for us to work out, the fine print. However, there’s 110 per cent possibility of us following through on what our members want.”

Other members of the board were not available for comment on this story.

In addition, Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash said police have yet to speak to Pride Toronto about the meeting and how, if at all, the endorsement will affect police presence at future events.

“It’s extremely confusing,” said Pugash. “We’re not commenting until we have some idea, some definitive idea from the organizers, as to what happened (at the meeting).”

Black Lives Matter brought the 2016 parade to a standstill for more than half an hour in July, refusing to move until Pride officials agreed to a list of nine demands, which also included committing space, funding and support for the group Black Queer Youth; “self-determination” for all community spaces; adequate funding for community stages; doubling funding for Blockorama, a showcase for black performers as well as ASL interpretation and headliner funding; reinstating community stages and spaces like the South Asian stage; prioritizing black trans women, black queer people and indigenous people when hiring Pride staff; hiring more black deaf and hearing ASL interpreters; and hosting a public town hall to update the community on the demands.

Pride’s then-executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed the list, but told the Star the next day he had no intention of honouring the demands before consulting the community.

Pride held two public town halls in August and also issued an apology in September on how it handled the protest, leaving eight demands unresolved.

Mayor John Tory said he is hopeful that the issue surrounding police participation in the pride parade can be resolved.

“The Toronto police have had a presence in the Pride parade for more than a decade and continue to make meaningful efforts to build bridges with the LGBTQ2S community. Also, we rely on our police service to keep Pride safe every year and obviously they must continue to do so,” he said in a statement Wednesday.

Following the vote Tuesday night, departing Pride co-chair Aaron GlynWilliams told the Star that the previous board supported the demands and will “remain committed to progressing on all those issues,” but that the presence of law enforcement remains a hot issue.

“What we’re really getting down to . . . is about the police and the role of the police at the festival,” GlynWilliams said. “This isn’t a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no;’ this is about implementation and operations, and that will fall to the new staff and new board that’s going to be elected tonight to figure out, not the what, but the how.”

Banning police from Pride was not on the table under the previous board, he emphasized.

“We are very committed to law enforcement and to pushing with law enforcement to consider their role and the way that they’re represented,” GlynWilliams said.

“A ban is not something that we have considered or would consider, and I think that’s the difficult grey area to explain to people, where there’s confusion.”

GlynWilliams added he thought the discussion on how to handle police presence at Pride would have been better had it took place after the five new board members had been elected.

“It was a bit of cart-before-the-horse to talk about it in advance of electing those new voices, because that’s really where the community is going to have their voice heard and make decisions on how to figure out the implementation,” he said.

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The main points on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting included presenting the board of director’s annual report and for the election of five new board members, but attendees raised a motion to have a discussion about the remaining demands by Black Lives Matter and then to endorse them. Both were supported by the majority of the room.

Janaya Khan, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, said the vote was an encouraging step in discussions with Pride Toronto.

“What the implementation of the demands will look like, we’ll see. We called for internal structural changes within Pride Toronto, challenged their hiring practices, and essentially cover all grounds of what Pride Toronto is . . . and it seems like that’s what the public wants,” Khan said.

“Our job as an organizing body is to amplify the voice of community members, and this is what the community has called for,” Khan added. “We don’t seek complete consensus. We seek to represent the marginalized. Change is uncomfortable, but it is necessary and we should be having these conversations.”