Chicago Dyke March returns after clash last year became international news

The alternative to the Chicago Pride Parade announces its solidarity with Palestine after a controversy broke out involving pro-Israel marchers in 2017.


The first Chicago Dyke March took place in Lakeview in 1996, and from the very beginning, its intentions were radical. That first march, its organizers said, was conceived as an alternative to the "corporate, white male dominated Chicago Pride Parade." To this day, it has no corporate sponsorships and doesn't allow police officers or politicians to participate. Its original intention was also to increase dyke visibility, which in recent years has expanded to include queer, bisexual, and transgender folks.

The Chicago Dyke March Collective, a fluctuating group of about ten core organizing members, is also explicitly anti-oppression. According to the group's website, the event is an "anti-racist, anti-violent" grassroots effort. After last year's Dyke March the collective put forth another core tenet, explicitly declaring itself anti-Zionist. It defines Zionism as "an inherently white-supremacist ideology . . . based on the premise that Jewish people have a God-given entitlement to the lands of historic Palestine and the surrounding areas."

Last year's march made international news after three participants—Laurel Grauer, Eleanor Shoshany Anderson, and a third woman whose identity has not been made public—bearing rainbow flags emblazoned with the Star of David altered the chant "From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go" to "From everywhere to Mexico." When they were asked to stop by both Jewish and Palestinian organizers and participants, they refused. An argument ensued over what the three marchers meant by the term "Zionism"—the Anti-Defamation League defines it as "the national liberation movement of the Jewish people in the Jews historic homeland . . . based on providing for equal opportunity for the Jewish people, like others, to have sovereignty in their land while still fully protecting the rights of minorities who live within Israel"—and eventually the organizers asked the women to leave the rally.

The dispute—and also misleading reports about what had actually happened—led some organizations and op-ed columnists, including the Anti-Defamation League, the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, and Bari Weiss of the New York Times, to dismiss the Dyke March out of hand, calling it anti-Semitic. This charge, however, doesn't ring true to some Jewish participants present at last year's march. On the event's Facebook page, Li Palombo, who identifies as an anti-Zionist "Jewish queer" writes, "I would like to put out a friendly reminder that anti-Zionism DOES NOT equal anti-Jewishness. I felt perfectly safe and accepted being Jewish at dyke march."

Read more: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicago-dyke-march-zionism-anti-semitism/Content?oid=50231229