North Grenville Pride dedicating 2022 celebrations to Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community

It’s taken the LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine 10 years to come as far as they have — but the war with Russia is setting the movement back. 

That’s what Jennifer Crawford, executive director of North Grenville Pride, and Lenny Emson, senior director of Kyiv Pride, told The Sam Laprade Show on Thursday, April 14.

As Crawford and Emson explain, this year, the country will mark a decade since Kyiv Pride began. 

When the movement first started marching through the streets of Kyiv, there was only a handful of people, Emson explained. But last year, they grew to 7,000 strong.

However, with Russia’s invasion, Emson said not only will the city be unable to celebrate its 10th year of pride and 30 years of LGBTQ+ in Ukraine, but members of the LGBTQ+ community have been experiencing more hate crimes and feel like they’ve been left behind in humanitarian efforts. 

“LGBTQ rights were developing in Ukraine and unfortunately, we're now looking at rolling back with all this process and unfortunately, within [about] 150 days of the invasion, we see that hate crimes are on the rise and unfortunately the LGBTQ community is not visible,” Emson said. “We remain under threat, and kind of remain between two fires: on one hand we have Russians attacking the country, we have homophobic, transphobic forces that are still here and they’re attacking LGBTQ people.”

As Emson explained, one of the leaders of the community was attacked last week, having had “pepper gas” sprayed in her face. 

It was “clearly a homophobic crime,” Emson said.

When Crawford heard about what LGBTQS+ individuals were experiencing in Ukraine during the Russian invasion, she felt compelled to help. 

So she reached out to Emson to see what the local community here could do to help. 

“Understanding, historically, the humanitarian system is designed to support cisgender, heterosexual family structures, with women and children identified as the most vulnerable,” Crawford said. “This can leave the LGBTQS+ population, and other high-risk populations overlooked.”

So with pride month coming up in June Crawford said the Kemptville march for LGBTQ will be dedicated to Ukraine pride.

It will also be a conduit to raise funds for a shelter Emson is helping to build in western Ukraine that will welcome LGBTQ+ folks. 

“When you think about these structural exclusion and protection gaps that are in place that really and truly do not protect some of the most vulnerable in the community, it literally renders the LGBTQ community and their suffering invisible because nobody’s identifying them as a high-risk population,” Crawford stressed.

So far, the shelter was given a $2,000 donation from one of the board members in North Grenville — but it’s still not enough, and they need to raise more. 

“We got a running head start. Our hope is to raise as much funds as we can and get it directly to Kyiv pride so that they can make sure it gets to the places where it’s needed the most,” Crawford said. 

Emson will stay in Ukraine to help with the shelter and be a part of a support system for a population that is feeling “invisible” during the conflict. 

As Emson put it, so many members of the community cannot leave for many reasons, so she’ll be staying behind to help. 

“We need to help them right here,” Emson said. “if we flee, then who will be here, and who will help the community? The community will be left on their own. We are activists and are socially responsible for staying here in the country and working for the victory and working for the community.”