Article content Woke, the Black activist synonym for the word awake, has come to mean awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. By 2019, the term became a pejorative among many conservatives criticizing progressives as intolerant and moralizing, mocking their most radical actions as superficial or insincere, referring to them as “virtue-signaling, performative activists.” Emo, population 1,244, is a small rural township, located on the Rainy River near the southwestern corner of Northern Ontario, on the U.
S. border directly north of Minnesota. Kind of in the middle of nowhere, off the Trans-Canada Highway, 375 kilometres west of the Lakehead, 325 kilometers from Winnipeg, 36 kilometres from International Falls (population 5,800), county seat of Koochiching County, Minn.
Emo is known for its stock car races, its picturesque, family-friendly waterfront park, the annual Rainy River Agricultural Fair (the cattle industry is key there) and the Emo Walleye Classic fishing tournament. The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has fined Emo and its mayor $15,000 for “discrimination” following a 2020 council vote to not recognize June as Pride Month and to not fly a Pride Flag. Sacrilege.
Emo has no flagpole. The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has decided that Emo will have to pay damages to Borderland Pride after refusing to proclaim Pride Month back in 2020. Borderland Pride is the 2SLGBTQIA+ Pride organization serving the Rainy Riv.