A caravan of drag queens from throughout Texas made their voices heard at the Texas-Mexico border as they gathered to call attention to those LGBTQ migrants who are being detained or are seeking asylum.
The gathering of activists called the event No Border Wall Protest Drag Show, and they gathered in a park near the Rio Grande. Beatrix Lestrange, one of the organizers, commanded the crowd.
“Who’s ready to have a political time?” Lestrange yelled. “We’ll try to bring joy, positivity, beauty, drag, culture to whatever this is,” Lestrange said while pointing to the proposed fence.
“The vision was to perform in front of this wall and project our beauty and our glamour and our empowerment against this symbol that stands for hate, racism and xenophobia,” Lestrange said.
The well-attended event had other “dragtivists” perform. One was Michelangelo De Vinci who said that the border wall is personal for her. “I know his struggle coming over and how he built himself from the ground up with his third-grade education,” he said. “There are other people who are trying to come over here and do something better for themselves and their families — my dad being one of them — and these other people as well, so they should get a chance to live here also.”
The drag queens were able to raise $650 to send to organizations working to help asylum seeker. [NPR]
