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The Drag March was among a series of protests in the North Halsted District that month - and their impact was immediate, with a handful of business managers agreeing to meet with the protest leaders in a virtual, live-streamed town hall to discuss making the neighborhood more inclusive. (Photo by Jake Wittich/Block Club Chicago) It’s a continuation.” ‘You freed us’ Several Black drag queens, kings and activists lead the June 14 Drag March for Change. “I don’t see today as a new or separate movement from ours in the ’60s and ’70s. “But I have thrown myself up and down Halsted enough in my lifetime, so I’m happy the youngsters are doing it now,” said Bell, a retired college administrator. A Black gay man from Chicago’s South Side, Bell said his “heart and soul were in the streets” with the protesters as he cheered them on, but he stayed inside to avoid potential coronavirus exposure. Meanwhile, 70-year-old lifelong activist Don Bell watched from his window at Town Hall Apartments, an LGBTQ-friendly senior living facility that overlooks the street. Rice also called for the city to redistribute money from its $1.75 billion police budget into social service organizations like Brace Space Alliance. “You’re able to hide under a mask of queerness and queer oppression while simultaneously perpetuating white supremacy and anti-Blackness right here in Boystown,” Rice said. Jae Rice, a trans-masculine DJ and communications director for the Brave Space Alliance, speaks about oppression within Boystown during the June 14 Drag March protest. “Boystown is one of the most oppressive neighborhoods toward Black LGBTQ folks in the entirety of Chicago,” said speaker Jae Rice, a trans-masculine DJ and communications director for the Brave Space Alliance, Chicago’s only Black- and trans-led LGBTQ service organization. “Racism is a disease that has infected the entire world, … and one of the ways we can start to correct that is by identifying things that have gone on in our own Chicago queer community here,” Mama said.įrom discriminatory dress codes to bans on rap music, Mama and the protest’s 11 other leaders shared stories of their Black, queer experience and outrage over the inequities they have faced within Chicago’s famous “gayborhood.” It also sparked a revolution within Chicago’s LGBTQ community that built on decades-long activism and empowered Black queer people over the next several months. That Drag March for Change, held on June 14, was part of the national uprisings that followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Several thousand people packed North Halsted Street for a two-hour rally that ended June 14’s Drag March for Change.
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“Make no mistake: this is a protest and not a Pride Parade,” Mama declared from a pedestal at the end of the march, demanding better for Black queer people in their neighborhood and nationwide. Mama, who some know as longtime Boystown bartender Joe Lewis, organized the historic protest with nearly a dozen other Black drag performers and transgender people from Chicago. Their leader was Jo Mama, a six-foot-one drag queen in a baby blue pantsuit and afro hairstyle.
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They waved rainbow and blue-and-pink Pride flags, along with protest signs demanding justice for Floyd, Breonna Taylor and transgender man Tony McDade - all among the 1,039 or so people killed by police in the U.S.
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With each step up North Halsted Street, their chants of “Justice for George Floyd” and “Black Trans Lives Matter” echoed more loudly off the gay bars and LGBTQ centers that line the strip. CHICAGO - A sea of protestors, about several thousand strong, flooded the streets of Chicago’s LGBTQ neighborhood one chilly afternoon in June last year.