- Even though it's not political,
putting 1000 drag queens out into the street
of New York once a year,
is kind of like sticking a thermometer up Manhattan's butt.
- We're here! - We're here!
- We're queer! - We're queer!
- Let's see how we're accepted. Let's see how it works.
- We march today! - We march today!
- Together! - Together!
- I kind of find it to be like a rebellious action.
- [Leader] We're making room for everybody!
- We're making room for everybody!
- Our radical action.
- We're changing the world! - We're changing the world!
- The forces that put the Drag March into motion
were these people who asked us to assimilate.
- We're queer!
- Get used to it! - Get used to it!
(spectators cheering)
- We're the anti-assimilation march.
If we assimilate, they're still going to hate us
and so we just need to lead.
♪ Somewhere over the rainbow ♪
- To me, it kind of feels like a ritual.
(paraders chanting)
It's my favorite event of the year.
- What do we want?
- When do we want it? - Now!
- What do we want? (upbeat music)
- PRIDE is a concept that has been hard fought and won
in the LGBTQ+ community.
That's why PRIDE Month is such an important time
for so many people.
It's an opportunity for us to gather as a community
and celebrate our voices, history and achievements.
Here in New York, one of the best PRIDE celebrations
is the Drag March.
The annual protest slash visibility march,
which started in 1994,
serves as an unofficial kickoff to NYC PRIDE Weekend.
Thousands of participants first gather
at Tompkins Square Park before making their way
to Greenwich Village, along the way marchers chant, sing
and send forth glorious vibes that PRIDE is known for.
The march concludes with a joyous celebration
outside the legendary Stonewall Inn.
We talked to two of the figures
involved with the Drag March,
Brian Griffin and Steven Love,
to learn about the march's origins, traditions,
and all the hard work that goes into the celebration.
Leaderless, non-corporate, and above all, inclusive.
The Drag March aims to celebrate all members
of the LGBTQ+ community in their unique brilliance.
I'm Peppermint and this isn't just our history,
this is legendary.
- I'm Brian Griffin also known as Harmonie Moore,
the Church Ladies for Choice,
and sometimes known as Sister Mary Enterprise,
going where no nun has gone before.
As I make my way into
the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence of New York City.
- The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,
this is Mother Theresa Novena from the Seattle.
(crowd cheering)
The only good homosexual is a dying homosexual.
- We're all in this together!
- [Theresa] We're here today to oppose the Vatican.
- Back in the early nineties, when I moved to New York,
I joined ACT UP and was also involved with a group
called Wham! Women's Action Health Mobilization,
or the women's group that matched ACT UP,
and so we dressed up as church ladies
to defend women's health care facilities, abortion clinics,
and I decided I would take on the name Harmonie Moore.
When you do an active demonstration,
there's a chant that we have,
how many more have to die,
but you say it for an hour or two
and it turns into harmony more has to die
and who is this poor woman
and why are we trying to kill her?
My church lady introduction was, "Hi, I'm Harmonie Moore,
"as in harmony more women must die
"of botched illegal abortions due to the fascist injustices
"of the American right-wing
"and their psycho Christian lapdogs?
"Something's better than nothing.
"Yes, but nothing's better than more.
"Thank you. Steven Sondheim."
(crowd cheering)
We would go to women's health care facilities
and we would entertain the people
who were defending the clinics,
because if you kept the numbers up
then they wouldn't be blockaded.
So that was how I did drag.
We called it booger drag. Street drag.
We still gather and sing our songs,
tell our stories and entertain,
usually to raise money for homeless LGBTQIAA+ youth.
♪ Mary and Gloria ♪
♪ She'll lick clit on the floor with ya ♪
♪ God is a dyke ♪
- 27 years ago was the 25th anniversary
of the Stonewall riots.
There was to be a big celebration
and Gilbert Baker was going to come
and sew a mile long rainbow flag
that was going to be the centerpiece of all of this.
The organizers for Stonewall 25,
they had put out a press release
that stated that they did not want
anyone showing up in drag or leather
so as to create a palatable image for the Midwest,
and it was Gilbert who actually said the words,
we should throw a Drag March.
And it was like this like chrysanthemum of white light
went off in my head
because of the four years of ACT UP, I knew how to do it,
not only did I know how, I saw it, I saw it happening.
(upbeat music) I also knew that if I got
1000 drag queens marching in the street,
the cops could do nothing.
Like, it's Stonewall 25,
there's no way they're going to stop us
because one baton raised, one arrest made and we win.
Like, we just get the whole box of chocolate.
I turned to him and I said,
"Oh my God, we're going to have a Drag March."
(rhythmic drumming)
- I'm Steven Menendez, Steven Love Menendez.
I'm an activist and I'm an artist. I'm a photographer.
The way that I would describe my drag persona
is I kind of call it man drag,
'cause I kinda do interpretations
of like, mythical or godly kind of figures.
So I've done Jesus, God, Neptune.
That's my inspiration for my drag.
Drag March is my favorite event of the year in New York City
because there's really very little police presence.
It's not barricaded. It feels very free.
This kind of more spirited, free,
love is the answer kind of movement
and Drag March feels like it's still happening.
My rainbow flag activism started during Occupy Wall Street.
There was a moment when the police had broken down
the encampment and then they had reopened it
and I decided to bring a rainbow flag that said peace.
When I put the flags up the first time,
people started coming up to me,
as the installation was going up and they were saying,
"Oh, this is an honor of Gilbert Baker,"
because Gilbert had just died recently
and so people were seeing it as an homage to Gilbert
who designed the flag.
For me, it's important to carry
the legacy of the rainbow flag
because it's the symbol for the LGBTQ movement
and so I felt like if the Stonewall National Monument
is the first monument, there should be some kind of symbol.
The rainbow flag is kind of like the universal symbol
to represent the movement.
- [Paraders] We're here. We're queer.
- It's important that the Drag March be leaderless
because without leaders,
people are encouraged more to be themselves.
They're not following.
We want the Drag March to be about
providing aesthetic directions,
not recreating or mimicking them.
- What do we want? (indistinct chanting)
- When we we want it? - Now!
- What do we want? (indistinct chanting)
- [Brian] I want it to be this spontaneous magical thing
that almost just happens
and happens differently every time.
- [Paraders] Our passion. Our power.
- There's a very spiritual tone to it,
while at the same time being very celebratory.
(chanting indistinctly)
For me, it's kind of like the perfect union
of celebrating life, but being in touch with
the spiritual elements that bring all of life together.
- [Brian] The Drag March starts at seven o'clock
in Tompkins Square Park.
The calling out of the corners,
that happens at the beginning,
which for me, as a theater person, is setting the stage.
It's raising the curtain.
- We gather in the East! - We gather in the East!
- We bid each other welcome! - We bid each other welcome!
- We gather together! - We gather together!
- For solidarity! - For solidarity!
- A testament to the fire! - A testament to the fire!
- Our passion, our power! - Our passion, our power!
- It's preparing people to see that this is,
even though we're all individuals,
this is going to be a collective endeavor
and it gets them in that frame of mind.
You call on the spirits of the north, east, south, and west
to enjoin the Drag March and propel it forward.
We make our way down Ninth Street,
crossing through Fifth Avenue,
we sing the Stonewall girls chant, which is...
♪ We are the Stonewall girls ♪
♪ We wear our hair in curls ♪
♪ We wear no underwear ♪
♪ We show our pubic hair ♪
And then when we get to the Stonewall
we gather into a circle and we sing the classic,
queer yearning hymn, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".
That's one of the magical moments
that I live for every year.
♪ If happy little bluebirds fly ♪
♪ Beyond the rainbow why oh why ♪
♪ Can't I ♪
(crowd cheering)
- To me, PRIDE means unabashedly celebrating yourself
for everything that you are.
PRIDE is claiming your power.
Is a rebellious action to all the people
that have oppressed LGBTQ people in their youth,
or even to this day. (upbeat dance music)
- The forces that put the Drag March into motion
were these people who asked us to assimilate,
to recreate the image of greater heterosexual America,
except for what we do in bed so that they'll accept us
and the Drag March says, "No, no.
"They need to come to us.
"We're the leaders, we're the aesthetic leaders.
"We're the ones who will create the images
"that they will then assimilate to."
And we're the artists and the experimenters
and the dreamers and, oh God,
I sound like Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory.
- For me, drag is dressing up in a way that's expressing
the way that you feel inside
and it's kind of breaking out of the regular norm
of what society sees as regular ways of presenting yourself
and I find it a more fun, expressive, creative,
artistic way to express yourself.
So in Western culture, queer people have been oppressed,
historically, for thousands of years.
What I find interesting is when I've studied
indigenous cultures and in those cultures,
either people identify as two spirit or queer or gay,
in those cultures, they may not even have names for that,
sometimes those people were seen as,
ended up being shamans of the tribes,
the wise person that people go to for counsel.
So they were held in high esteem
in a lot of indigenous cultures.
It's in modern times that it changed.
That's how I see queer people.
I see them as leaders, truth-tellers, wise ones.
(crowd cheering) (upbeat music)
- I like to think of myself as a jester.
(gentle music)
Society, in and of itself, allows you to say
and do different things when you're in a costume
and they allow drag queens to say and be different things.
There are continued traditions that just happen
because the community needs them.
There will always be queers.
There will always be, whether we call them
the LGBTQIAA+ community or queers
or fags or homos or dykes or lessies,
we're gonna be here, we've always been here,
and as a church lady,
we're a part of the creation.
We're needed.
It takes a village and we bring that village into being,
I think of it a lot of the time
as the little march that could,
the little community march, the march of friends
who gather to see each other once a year.
Even though it's not political,
putting 1000 drag queens out into the street
of New York once a year (cheering)
is kind of like sticking a thermometer up Manhattan's butt.
Let's see how we're accepted. (cheering continues)
Let's see how it works.
Let's see what's going on this year.
(crowd applauding) (crowd cheering)
♪ God is a lesbian ♪
♪ She is a lesbian ♪
♪ God is a dyke ♪
♪ Send her Victoria ♪
♪ Mary and Gloria ♪
♪ She'll lick clit on the floor with ya' ♪
♪ God is a dyke ♪