Empowering Victim Advocates: Organizing Against Anti-gay/lesbian Violence in Canada

This article provides an account of an emancipatory, community-based response to anti-gay/lesbian violence in Canada by outlining the model developed by The 519Church Street Community Centre Anti-Violence Programme (The 519), previously known as the Victim Assistance Programme. The data for this article was obtained through participant observation over a five year period from1993–1997. The goal of this article is to document and critique the model developed at The 519 by focussing on advocacy, policing issues, education, and the production of knowledge about anti-gay/lesbian violence. While the Committee's inclusionary agenda seems to be the most strategic approach to gaining equity in services in existing institutions, contradictions arise which suggest that ruptures exist between the promise of mainstream institutional change and resistance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) activism. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.