Antisemitism and the Decline and Fall of the DC DYKE MARCH
Steeped in herstory, the DC DYKE MARCH was a celebration of what it means to be an out and proud dyke when it hit the DC streets in 1993. The lesbian community made a bold statement that they would no longer be invisible, the lesser partner to gay men, taking over the streets to create a positive, welcoming space where women could just be themselves.
While fierce from the start, the DC DYKE MARCH slowly lost steam and, in the end, was little more than a staggard stroll through Dupont Circle when it shuttered in 2007. It became a victim to so many other causes and an increasing corporate machine that drove the commercialization of Pride into the behemoth that it is today.
When it roared back to life in 2019, it was shocking to many that they would not adhere to the roots of inclusion by adopting pro-Palestinian statements and excluding Jews from carrying Jewish Pride flags. I had contacted the organization about similar incidents in Chicago where Jewish marchers were told to leave.
I didn’t expect this to happen in DC. I just wanted to make sure they had a plan to protect us from harassment. I never once expected that the people we would need protection from were the organizers.
The march organizers, many of which were part of a hate-based group that targets Israel and its supporters with PR stunts made for social media. Their funding is shrouded in mystery.
When we showed up they physically blocked us from joining the other participants with their bodies. Eventually, when we stood firm and would not be excluded, they got out of our way, with our Jewish pride flags in hand.
Their tortured logic on display for the world caught on camera, replayed over social media for all the world to see. They were not standing up for the rights of women or queer people who are brutalized and forced to marry or flee Palestinian territories.
The DC Dyke March like so many organizations adopting exclusionary policies has crumbled to a faint shadow of what it was. Their hate-filled exclusionary politics are antithetical to the real meaning of pride as expansionary, radically inclusive, and welcoming without political conditions. We saw a similar peak and crash with the Women’s March.
The DCDM this year drew fewer than 100 people to its ranks. At times the police outnumbered the attendees by 3 to 1. The crowds didn’t show this year or last year. The decline and fall of the DC Dyke March is a cautionary tale of what can happen when we allow personal political agendas to divert our queer organizations away from their mission and eventual decline and irrelevance.
Driving part of the decline was a steadfast concern that they adhere to non-permitted event status. No organization was created to plan or fundraise for the DCDM. Its adherence to its own mythology of a riot that showed up one day, a fabrication at best that forever doomed the DCDM to a gay fairy tale.
The famed Lesbian Avengers organized the DC March in 1993 that drew 20,000. Marlene Colburn, one of the founders of the DC Dyke March, wanted a space that was beyond the lesbian bars. She talks about being excluded from white lesbian spaces and how there was an absence of black-only spaces and how people just need a place to be.
It is ironic then that the DC DYKE MARCH should stray so far from the founding principles to be exclusive of Jewish people and not a place where connection and community prevail. In 2019, all that changed when a handful of activists with their political agenda resurrected the March, not as a means to advance lesbian causes or visibility, but as a recruiting tool for their own political agendas.
In 2019, I contacted the March organizers over Facebook to see if they had a plan to me and my friends from harassment for carrying a Jewish Pride flag. Not only did Organizer Rae( last name) confirm that they were not going to protect us, they would ban the flag from the event. They encouraged me to let people know about it, including the press, so I did.
The organizers said they had banned this flag while allowing the PLO flag to be flown. They also banned nationalist flags. While the Jewish Pride flag does not resemble the Israeli flag, the PLO flag is a copy of the Jordanian flag, a nationalist symbol if there ever was one. Their stunning lack of knowledge, context, and history is typical of the cult-like organizations that drive their animus.
What followed was a flurry of press coverage and denials from the organizers. They could just not understand why we all didn’t hate Israel. I believe that they felt their truths to be self-evident. For them, it is evident that Israel, a democracy with equal rights for Arab Israeli’s, Jews, and Christians, should be demonized. Their accomplishments scrubbed clean and ever repressive action by Hamas on the Palestinians should be ignored.
In 2020, the same shenanigans persisted. While Covid was running high and protests for Black Lives Matter overflowed on the streets, the DCDM organizers decided to throw a surprise march. Participants were told to gather in a local park, for which they did not receive a permit, and then they would be told where they were marching to and for what purpose.
As I sat on the grass waiting for word of where we were going, I thought how marches are usually for something but this was a march that was diverted to a political end that was non disclosed, nonspecific and like all the shady things that the DCDM did, not progressive. We all were there for one purpose and ended up servicing the political goals of the organizers.
When the destination was finally announced, the organizers expected us to walk to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s house and protest outside of it. I was repulsed that the DCDM would gather outside of a personal residence to intimidate her and her family.
When I asked around as to what the issue was with the Mayor, it was clear that no one could articulate anything that they could point to as an action that should be taken. Were we advocating for more resources to solve the murders of black transgender members of our community or for more funding of programs? No one really knew. I could not participate in a march that had no clear connection to the queer goals of the community.
In 2021, the police officers outnumbered the participants at times. Flanking the gathering spot, McPherson squares were 10 cop cars and vans and an entire bike brigade of cops and very few participants. The few stragglers that showed up were lackluster at best.
The reboot was never about the lesbian community’s activism. It was a cold and calculated attempt to use a beloved but abandoned institution to push their hate-filled rhetoric. It is a lesson that we allow to be repeated at the peril of the progress we have made.
Many other organizations will similar agendas have popped up seemingly overnight with Pro-Palestinian agendas and solidarity statements. While I fully support the right of Queer people to be free in Palestine, they are not. If that is what you are fighting for, then I will fight along side of you. But if your goal is to intimidate and make Jews feel like they are unwelcome, that they are not part of your progressive space because we support the only democracy in the middle east, that has a massive pride parade and provides full and equal rights to the Christians, Muslims and jews that make Israel their home, then maybe your goals are not equality but discrimination.
No one wants to see our queer organizations crumble, recording everything we have built through years of advocacy to be beholden to a few activists who believe their views are the only valid points of view, and if you don’t adhere to it, you are evil and to be shunned.
Pride can only exist and thrive in a culture of expansiveness. Our rainbow alphabet of love tracking our blossoming inclusion. Don’t let our other queer organization be corrupted by the narrow political views that don’t adhere to our values.
Pride is for everyone.
