The Hijacking of the Chicago Dyke March
The Chicago Dyke March organizers don’t want to hold a dyke march. They want an excuse to market their hate-filled antisemitism to the queer community. In response, the organizers have been posting inflammatory images then deleting social media accounts. These actions are not without consequences, including a sudden interest by hard-right news outlets like Breitbart. As it stands now, the Dyke March is canceled, and a new Abolition March has been scheduled instead sponsored by the “Chicago Dyke March.”
Update: The Chicago Dyke March was cancelled due to “dyke march 2021 will be rescheduled due to weather and related concerns (access, safety, etc). This was posted just after a long jargon-laden post with anti-Israel talking points used by the Anti-Zionist left. (Posted Below)
Is it so crazy to think that a Dyke March should be about Dyke stuff?
Why are so many organizers talking about Palestine as if it is central to the Dyke Experience? I get solidarity, but there are real issues in the Dyke community that we are not focusing on because of all this talk about Palestine. We should be talking about housing, access to medical care, adoption, violence, and equity.
The opportunity cost to the lesbian community of missing this opportunity to organize together is massive. The Dyke Marches should be a place of visibility, activism, and dialogue and instead, they have been away for some organizers to hijack the message of the mark for their own political agenda.
The Palestinian narrative has been shoehorned into our queer events before in Chicago in 2017, 2018, and 2021 and at the DC Dyke March in 2019. In DC, the organizers who were part of IfNotNow, a faux activist organization with shadowy financing, resurrected the DC Dyke March only to make it a Zionist free space, so much so that even a Jewish Star on a rainbow flag was too much for them, and they tried to keep Jews out. Of course, they didn’t win because we fought back against their actions.
Since, the DC Dyke march showdown in 2019 the march has lost relevance, attendance, and purpose. Maybe people don’t want to align themselves with causes that have nothing to do with the queer community. People want to unite and fight for something not tell people to get out.
Now the Chicago Dyke March is looking to outdo the efforts that ultimately tanked the DC DYKE MARCH by subverting the actual reason for the march that is Dyke visibility, promoting dyke awareness, and creating a sense of community so that it only supports its organizers pet political views.
Check out the poster this year:
WHAT IS A DYKE MARCH?
Historically, Dyke Marches are a way for lesbians who felt overshadowed by their gay counterparts to take to the streets to promote visibility. It was a way to show the general public that lesbians were ordinary people in everyday jobs who you knew.
The first Dyke March as May 1981 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is a lesbian conference on Nationalism. Some 200 attendees marched through the streets shouting:
“Look over here, look over there; lesbians are everywhere!”
On October 17, 1981, the storied Lesbians Against the Right held a “Dykes in the Streets” march in Toronto, Ontario, with 350 women filling the streets and stopping into men's gay bars.
THE STONEWALL RIOT
The Stonewall Riot was ignited when the queer community joined together in NYC’s Greenwich Village bar and the surrounding areas to mourn the death of Judy Garland together. Unfortunately, the cops arrived to harass the attendees. Police harassment was common with some members of the gay community targeted with arrest, sexual exploitation, and violence for being in and around the queer community.
The Stonewall queers fought back against police harassment. The attendees marched up 5th avenue in the street to tell the world that the violence had to end.
Although the lesbian community has always been a part of the pride, many felt erased in the activism. As a result, the Lesbian Avengers, an activist group, organized the first Dyke March in New York City in 1992.
In 1993, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force sponsored a March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian rights. The Lesbian Avengers sponsored the first nationwide Dyke March the night before April 24th. It is reported that there were 20,000 marchers.
Links for more history
- Bearchell, Chris (June 1981). “Lesbian Pride March is a First for Canada.” The Body Politic. Pink Triangle Press. p. 10.
- “Lesbians Battle the Right.” The Body Politic. Pink Triangle Press. October 1981. p. 10.
- Lesbian Avengers Eating Fire Demonstration. Photo by Carolina Kroon.
WHY WAS IT SO EASY TO TAKE OVER DYKE MARCHES?
The marches have been unpermitted, loosely organized, and never developed supporting organizations or sponsors like the larger pride celebrations. There has never been any rhyme or reason why Dyke Marches could not evolve into fully functioning organizations, but they never did.
The repulsion of sponsorship or the legal status of a nonprofit made the Dyke Marches prime targets for taking over by hate-based Antisemitic groups who wanted to exclude Jews from events using various means or by taking positions that seek to exclude anyone who supports Israel.
Chicago Dyke March
It was never an easy ride for the Chicago Dyke March; there were complaints about the inclusion of their black and brown sisters. Mission statements were made, and the march was moved to a new area at the turn of the century.
It was into this chaos, confusion, and lack of accountability that supporters of the anti-zionist cult infiltrated through the cracks left by organizers who had moved on.
It must have been easy to swoop in and take over a beloved even with an established social media presence and a following. It was easy to show up and volunteer for the event.
Their mission statement in 2017 was pretty good:
Chicago Dyke March Collective is a grassroots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual, and transgender resilience. It is an anti-racist, anti-violent, volunteer-led, grassroots effort with a goal to bridge together communities across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, size, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, culture, immigrant status, spirituality, and ability. We challenge fatphobia and are body positive.
It is the kind of mission statement that one might expect.
In 2017, three Chicago Dyke March participants were asked to leave the march because they carried pride flags with Jewish Stars. According to the [dis]organizers, they “repeatedly expressed support for Zionism.”
The marchers were told that they “made people feel unsafe,” adding that the march was “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian,” yet there was no mention of it in the mission statement above, taken from the official DYKE MARCH COLLECTIVE website.
One of the people asked to leave was A Wider Bridge Midwest Manager Laurel Grauer, who said she and her co-marcher were harassed. “It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag,” she told Windy City Times. “They were telling me to leave because my flag was a trigger to people that they found offensive,” Laurel Grauer said. “Before this [march], I had never been harassed or asked to leave, and I had always carried the flag with me.”
Iranian Jew Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson said: “I was here as a proud Jew in all of my identities,” Shoshany-Anderson asserted. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional. I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I feel that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”
A statement posted June 25 on Dyke March Chicago social media accounts read in part:
“Sadly, our celebration of dyke, queer and trans solidarity was partially overshadowed by our decision to ask three individuals carrying Israeli flags superimposed on rainbow flags to leave the rally. This decision was made after they repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Dyke March Collective members.”
Laure Grauer confirmed that the organizers questioned her directly. “People asked me if I was a Zionist, and I said ‘yes, I do care about the state of Israel, but I also believe in a two-state solution and an independent Palestine,’” Grauer said. “It’s hard to swallow the idea of inclusion when you are excluding people from that. People are saying, ‘You can be gay but not in this way.’ We do not feel welcomed. We do not feel included.”
The Chicago Dyke March Collective doubled down on both their ignorance and hate by saying that the Star of David, an ancient symbol of the Jewish people, as a form of “pinkwashing.” Pinkwashing is a term used to purposely ignore the gains and equality that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Queers have attained in Israeli and to completely ignore the violence and oppression of Palestinians to their own queer community.
Social media posts supporting the Dyke March Collective also claimed that a rainbow flag with a Star of David is a form of pinkwashing (a belief that Israeli support of LGBTQ communities is designed to detract attention from civil and human rights abuses of Palestinian people).
RACIST REFERENCES: ZIO
The Chicago Dyke March has reportedly, tweeted “Zio tears replenish my electrolytes” in 2017 as documented in the article links below. The article in the Forward has some screenshots.
The Journalist who broke the story was later fired according to the report at the time because of pressure from the CDM organizers.
Some of the organizers that have these views are the FOR THE PEOPLE ARTISTS group, Invisible to Invisible and Kal Jazeera:
Some reading:
2018
In 2018, the same thing happened the Palestinian flag was flown at the beginning of the event, even before the Dyke March Banner. In the parade itself, which lasted all 5 minutes in the video, Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel organization that does PR stunts to attract attention. Here you see them in the match in their t-shirts holding a “Palestinians Should Be Free” banner.
There was never any secret about the linkages of the Chicago Dyke March and their notional idea of Palestine. At a fund-raising event on May 31, called Dyke Mic, Sarah Youssef purportedly told the crowd that 2018 would be held in solidarity with Palestine. (Source)
2021 CHICAGO DYKE MARCH
The completely shocking violent imagery below was purportedly created by artist Ingrid T. S. Rodriquez, who post the link to the GoFundMe page for the Chicago Dyke march in their Instagram bio.
https://www.instagram.com/t.s.rodriguez/
The For the People Collective posted so proudly that the March is Anti-zionist and pro abolition and that it might or might not be about dykes. It’s like they just came in and took over the march and perverted it for their own political ends. Do the people who show up to the events care about these hate-filled statements? No. It is only the organizers.
MORE HATE
There were other questionable posts by the now-deleted ChiDykeMarch account.
Mushadeedi on their Instagram account posted this image. Saying that they recreated call a poster that calls for armed rebellion in 1975 by the General Union of Palestinian Students, French Branch. You can see the herringbone pattern. The original image is below it commemorates (I believe) the 1975 Lebanon rebellion.
Deleting Social Media
Social media accounts for the Dyke March Collective have moved around a bit. Their social media gets sanitized and images deleted. I have captured this hate-filled deck from their short-lived third or fourth Instagram accounts that have since been deleted. They attribute this pink deck to Swana a SouthWest Asian North Afrikan advocacy organization but it looks substantially similar to other anti-Israel organization statements.
https://www.instagram.com/swanachicago/?hl=en
Just Kidding
After all this hate and embarrassment, now it is not even a Dyke March it is a protest sponsored by the Chicago Dyke March against Abolition. So I guess none of it mattered. So now they don’t even want to have a dyke march at all.
Turn out is expected to be super low because of the constant changes, inconsistent messaging, and not really any sense of structure. It is hard to know what to make of any of this but the same thing has happened to the DC Dyke March and the Women’s March. It just collapses under the weight of its own antisemitism.
I think of all the lost opportunity costs associated with the collapse of these organizations that could forward the feminist queer agenda through organizing. Still, instead, it just becomes a borrowed marketing list for whatever organizer decided to show up.
Reclaiming Dyke Marches for Dykes
If we want to stop these takeovers, it is imperative that the Dyke Marches become nonprofits on their own. No more dodgy fundraising or lack of clarity about leadership and message.
It is time for Dykes to start reclaiming Dyke Marches for Dykes.
UPDATE:
A statement posted on the Dyke March Facebook page shows how deep the issue goes.
DYKE MARCH STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE:
This year, Chicago Dyke March is reaffirming our commitment to an abolitionist vision of the world — one in which indigenous, Black, brown and other oppressed people unite against the common enemies of capitalism, settler colonialism, White Supremacy, ableism and cishetero-patriarchy. We believe in a world without borders, without police, without militaries, without incarceration and without surveillance. We believe in liberation for indigenous communities from Standing Rock to Mexico to Palestine. We believe all our struggles are linked, that queer and trans liberation cannot be extracted and isolated from broader liberation struggles.
Every LGBTQIA+ person who shares our values and our vision for a just future is welcome to join our march on Saturday, June 26th, 2021 at 2 pm in Palmer Square. This year, we designed a poster that reflects our united stance as Queers against state violence — be it carried out by military or police, at home or abroad. Our design, created by artist Ingrid Rodriguez, features a Black femme burning the flags of two violent settler-colonial states: the United States and Israel. Just as we support the Land Back Movement’s demand for indigenous liberation in the Americas, we support Palestinians’ demand for liberation in their homeland.
We are accustomed to drawing the hatred of White supremacists. Over the past weeks as we have planned for our march, Instagram and Facebook’s censorship has intensified and our events and accounts have been deleted on multiple occasions. Our DMs have been full of hate mail and death threats, as well as promises to call a notoriously violent police department to our event.
Zionist organizations like the ADL, the Jewish United Fund, The American Jewish Committee, and A Wider Bridge, even issued a statement dismissing our work and slandering us with the charge of anti-Semitism. We reaffirm our right and the right of anyone with a conscience to critique the state of Israel. We refuse the bait-and-switch that conflates critiques of Zionism, a White Supremacist and settler colonial political ideology, with anti-Semitism. We marvel that Pink Washing continues to be used to justify Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. We follow the leadership of our Queer Palestinian organizers and siblings who have called on us to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause. (emphasis added)
In solidarity,
Dyke March
