‘Here to show our solidarity’
After threats from extremist groups, LGBTQ activists rally in support of The Center
After threats from Nazis and other extremist groups forced leaders at The LGBT+ Center Orlando to cancel a sold out Drag Queen Story Hour event, dozens of people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer and supporters gathered outside on Saturday to rally against hate.
People supporting The Center arrived as early as noon anticipating the possibility that at least 40 to 50 Nazis and other hate group members would show up as online threats made public Monday suggested.
“This was a chance for kids to be able to see people, who are very outside sometimes of the heteronormative structure of their daily life, engage in a really wholesome activity,” said May Beck, a transgender activist representing No More Dead Sisters, a group focused on transgender rights. “As has happened many times in many places, a collection of fascist groups and white nationalist groups called and threatened until The LGBT+ Center was forced to cancel the event out of fears and concerns for their safety. ... We needed to come out here to show our solidarity, to show our support for The LGBT+ Center and to build a stronger community among the queer and trans people in the city.”
By 2 p.m., the time that the canceled event would have started, Orlando police cars covered two blocks of Mills Avenue as dozens of officers on foot and on bicycles patrolled the area.
No one who appeared to be a Nazi or white supremacist show up. Only eight people came to protest the story hour. The group stayed silent in front of the Addition Financial Bank on Mills Avenue across from The Center holding a banner that depicted a photo of Jesus standing with a child with the message: “Dear God: Let NOT the little children be perverted by Drag Queen story hours!”
The banner said the group represented the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, a Catholic organization whose website claims that the group is “on the front lines of the Culture War” fighting for American morals. A video on their group’s website shows them protesting outside another Drag Queen Story Hour event in Texas alongside posts that reflect anti-immigrant views and accuse Disney of encouraging witchcraft and call for Disney to cancel Hocus Pocus 2.
On the other side of Mills Avenue about four times as many LGBTQ people and allies held signs that said “No Room For Hate In Orlando” and decried Nazism.
“Florida is not a white supremacist place,” said Wallace Rivera, a Puerto
Rican transgender man who came to support The Center. “This is a whole community of people and we are diverse. We’re Puerto Rican, we’re
Black, we’re white. Everyone here is welcome and we don’t need Nazis in our country in this day and age. It’s disrespectful, it’s painful, it’s saddening.”
However, seeing greater numbers among the LGBTQ supporters was heartening, Rivera added.
“We see so much hate online,” he said. “But when you come here in person, you see that there’s a bunch of gay people, a bunch of love, a bunch of appreciation, a really loving and welcoming community.”