Vandals strike Halifax-area businesses with anti-trans messaging

Two Halifax-area businesses are grappling with vandalism aft discriminatory messages targeting the trans assemblage were written connected their buildings.

The troubling incidents person raised concerns astir a imaginable emergence successful hatred crimes and whether it’s linked to authorities southbound of the border.

Just implicit a week ago, idiosyncratic wrote graffiti connected Venus Envy’s storefront with a harmful anti-trans statement.

In a societal media post, the store says the “reality is that the scenery for the 2SLGBTQIA+ assemblage is shifting successful galore ways, including antagonistic ones which infringe connected trans and sex non-conforming people’s close to exist.”

Another business, Glitter Bean Cafe, was besides vandalized past week with a crude, anti-trans scrawling made connected the broadside of the building.

In that case, the cafe said it volition “persist and proceed to beryllium a abstraction that offers information and comfortableness for marginalized folks” and that the emergence successful “aggressive, bigoted behaviour” was concerning.

Some wonderment if those behaviours are linked to the governmental climate.

“I deliberation it’s hard not to link it to the sweeping measures that are being undertaken presently successful the United States and astir notably the enforcement orders that Donald Trump has issued conscionable successful the precise abbreviated time,” said Margaret Denike, a Dalhousie University governmental subject and sex and women’s studies professor.

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Lisa Lachance, the province’s NDP 2SLGBTQIA+ spokesperson, said what happens crossed the borderline has reverberations astatine home.

“We’re seeing rights that seemed firmly entrenched being stripped away, and that’s truly concerning for folks. So far, that hasn’t happened here, but I’d similar to deliberation that we’re going to debar the civilization warfare astir this,” Lachance said.

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