20th Annual NYC Drag March

I had the most fantastic and invigorating time at the festive 20th annual New York City Drag March with my fabulous friends including members of the NYC Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Church Ladies for Choice and Radical Faeries on June 28th. The Drag March in New York City emerged 20 years ago at the Stonewall 25 commemoration when the organizing committee for that event asked that Drag and Leather folk leave their usual attire at home.  Instead of buying into this attempt at "normalizing", the Drag March celebrated Gay Spirit in all of its manifestations and became the most authentic celebration of all that Stonewall truly was and is.  It was the Drag Queens who first fought back when the police raided their hangout at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969.  It was the fierce and fabulous queer spirit of Drag that sparked the modern LGBT Civil rights movement and that is what the annual Drag March celebrates and honors. We gathered in Thompkins Square Park in the East Village at 8th Street and Avenue A, where we had an opening ritual.  We then marched through the downtown streets to the site of the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street in the West Village, where a closing ritual that included dancing, chanting, fun and singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" took place.