Class Struggle Drag Defense
Class Struggle Drag Defense is democratic, working class, militant support for trans lives. It is based on the belief that to truly defend trans lives requires building a movement for the abolition of all economic classes in society through working class-led general strikes for revolution.
It’s been clear for a while now that whatever we want to call the “far right,” i.e., fascists, neo-fascists, neo-confederates, or just plain ole’ American conservatism in the 21st century, they’re targeting trans communities across the country. This means that anyone who is trans; anyone who is simply considered by fascists to be gender non-conforming and otherwise anyone who they might view as an “other,” faces a very real and constant threat of violence. The threat exists everywhere and against numerous communities. Fascists nationwide have made it their mission to particularly target what are known as “Drag Story Hours.” In an inspiring display of solidarity, communities have come together to defend these events from the fascists. Unfortunately, defense campaigns have not always been successful.
What follows includes a critique of the strategy used in some instances of Drag Story Hour defense. This is not intended to tear anyone down, rather it is a comradely contribution to an urgently needed discussion about how we better defend people from fascist attacks and build a stronger movement that can turn the tide on the activated homophobes and transphobes. It is to recognize that storm clouds are darkening, making the development of antifascist strategy and mobilization more pressing. It is to recognize that the capitalist settler-colony we call the USA is in an advancing state of socio-political decay, and it is in hopes of discussing how we fight for something better together—socialism—using class struggle methods.
Class Contradictions of Drag Defense in Suburban Ohio
A few months ago, the socialist magazine Tempest ran an interview with people who helped organize Drag Story Hour defense in three Ohio suburbs at the beginning of 2023. They reflected on ways to improve the strategy, especially after the fascist Proud Boys succeeded in shutting down an earlier drag show event in Columbus the prior December. One drag defense was in a town called Wadsworth, near Akron. The other two events were in Chardon and in Chesterland, outside of Cleveland.
As the interview covered, the event in Wadsworth was successfully defended, but they were vastly outnumbered, and it could have easily gone the other way. In Chesterland, the church venue was the target of a firebombing scare. In response, the main event organizer then involved the police, who surrounded the building in a half-mile perimeter. This created what the interview described as “an occupation zone.” The event in Chardon led to an alliance between who they referred to as “dozens of militants clad in black bloc,” as well as “community members and sympathetic clergy.” They outnumbered the fascists, and the event went on without issue.
Shortly after reading this interview, there happened to be a Drag Story Hour near me in Cleveland, so I joined a community defense crew. Before going into more detail, let me provide a little background for those not familiar with Northeast Ohio.
Each of the suburbs discussed in the Tempest interview are almost entirely white, at least 96%. Wadsworth is solidly middle class with 8.1% poverty and a median income right below the national average. Both Chesterland and Chardon have median incomes roughly $20,000 and $10,000 more per year than the national average, while poverty is at 8.3% and 6.3%, respectively. In contrast to the relatively affluent white middle class suburbs, Cleveland is only 38.6% white, has a median income that’s half the national average, and 31.4% live below the poverty line. Although no one would get that impression from the Drag Story Hour defense I attended.
It was hosted in a local theater in a very liberal middle-class neighborhood that looks far different than it used to. The once vibrant working class LGTQIA+ community was forced out with the rest of the low-income inhabitants, mostly people of color. This was the result of a decade of massive gentrification, on a scale few other places across the country have experienced. During an online event on the subject, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless described this the process of gentrification in this neighborhood as a type of intense economic warfare.
Basically, these neighborhoods were re-colonized by people from the suburbs. Then people from the east and west coasts started buying up property. Nearly all these people have been white. Rent went from two-bedroom apartments costing $600 per month to $1800 today. Housing prices went from two-unit duplexes costing around $40,000 back in the summer of 2011 to $300,000-400,000 on Zillow today. This is relevant for understanding the intersections between gentrification of working-class communities and economic under-development, sky-rocketing inequality, the funding of police, and the rise of the far right.
Unified Cleveland Drag Defense, or a Police State?
So, there were about thirty of us who came a couple hours before Drag Story Hour to prepare. As a group, we were almost entirely white and middle-class. This was in stark contrast to the about half dozen “black-clad defenders” (anti-fascists) who seemed more working class and attempted to join the defense crew later in the morning. Sadly, the executive director of the theater politely told them to go away, in what appeared to be an effort to not upset the cops. In the end, only a handful of fascists showed up. They mostly stayed across the street.
Between the defenders and fascists, there were lots of cops, probably more than both sides put together. Cleveland was like Chesterland apparently, except there was no bomb threat. The mass presence of the police did not make our side feel safe, rather it seemed more like a demonstration of power and control over both sides. While Cleveland voters recently elected the city’s second Black mayor in 2022, Justin Bibb, he’s made it clear that he’s on the side of gentrification and police domination.
The city government has been shoveling more money into the police each year. Cleveland’s proposed 2023 policing budget allocates $381 million in funding for the Department of Public Safety, accounting for about 60% of the city's total budget. Now the priority for gentrification is “Midtown.” Part of the city’s funding for cops will go to a new police headquarters they’re building in Midtown as the centerpiece of re-colonization, in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation to provide their usual mask of “philanthropy.” The building was a large live-work artist loft with their own café and credit union, but they all got evicted without fanfare.
Like most Democratic mayors in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter rebellion of 2020, Bibb is increasing the funding for police as more cities experience housing crisis and defund infrastructural development. Instead, we should consider the history of Midtown, which includes Malcolm X giving his first “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech there in 1964, the “Hough Uprising of 1966” took place, and another uprising for Black power in the summer of 1968.
Back at the Drag Defense, the presence of the police was palpable. It was apparent that the Cleveland PD had a bunch of cops in plain clothes in and around the drag defense perimeter, along the sidewalk, and down the street. At one point I overheard a sergeant talking about it to that same theater director. He also mentioned that the FBI was on-site and had been monitoring the situation for some time. That means they’re using the Drag Story Hour events to justify a massive surveillance campaign against everyone involved. What was most alarming was what he said next. He said he wasn’t going to confirm or deny, but that the FBI might have undercover agents embedded among the drag defenders themselves. It was supposed to be reassuring. It definitely wasn’t.
By accepting and even aligning with the heavy police presence, the political leadership of this event willingly pushed for everyone to give up their basic civil liberties in the name of the government defending them against the threat of fascism. This strategy ignores how elements of the capitalist ruling class and state itself are enabling the growth of far-right street movements. The police especially, are permeated with fascist activists and sympathizers.
On that particular day, the cops and FBI may have treated the fascists across the street as the more immediate threat, and not the drag defenders. But that could easily change. In places like Atlanta, the state is prosecuting Stop Cop City protesters as “domestic terrorists”. Forty-two people have been accused of “domestic terrorism” in their arrest warrants who are now facing decades-long prison sentences. Knowing this, I couldn’t help but feel like the police, the excessive surveillance, and national security state was on display as a threat to all people fighting for justice. Understanding the three-sided character of this Drag Defense campaign, it is important to discuss strategy—class struggle strategy—that can prepare us for the struggles ahead.
For Class Struggle Drag Defense
All the people involved in the drag defense, including the theater director, but not including the cops and FBI, seemed genuine and caring. It just seemed like they were trying to do their best in an extremely difficult situation. We surrounded ourselves with rainbow umbrellas, making a path for the kids and their parents as they entered the building. We turned off the music and sang as they arrived. No one could even see the fascists through the umbrellas, their lone bullhorn drowned out by our song. It was a joyous experience.
But in the face of rising fascism, we need to be doing far more. We need to be organizing independently from the state, and against the cops. We need to be building the capacity to truly defend our communities, and to defend one another.
The liberal middle-class politics that lead to alignment with the police and for a state solution to the rising threat of fascists will only make us weaker and more vulnerable. The petty-bourgeois liberal politics that attempt to channel resistance into supporting the police, and by extension, voting for and propping up politicians that pursue the imperatives of capitalist investors over working-class communities, will only exacerbate the conditions giving rise to the far-right efforts to channel social discontent towards LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, and people of color.
Gentrified and displaced communities like these in Cleveland are the product of the rot of US capitalism—as well as the rising threat of fascism. Cities across the US lost their industrial base when capital started migrating southward back in the late 1960s. The neoliberal defunding of social services, infrastructure, and basic needs over the last decades have also contributed to declining standard of living for most working-class people. Add to that recurring capitalist crisis, and how this has accelerated wealth accumulation at the top and impoverishment and increased inequality for the rest of us, we can see how things have continued to worsen.
Instead of the failed liberal politics of an imaginary middle-class USA, we need class struggle drag defense. We need to link all struggles, such as the defense of Drag Story hour, to a larger fight to abolish all classes in society—starting with the millionaire and billionaire class. We also need to reject and oppose the idea that the police are our allies, and to also envision our fight as one to abolish the police and the whole state-repressive apparatus.
We need to be building the capacity for this sort of defense in every community and workplace. We need to grow our collective capacity to sustain strikes, to be able to bring the gears of the economy to a halt in defense of trans lives. This is the revolutionary power of the working classes, who, across the US landscape are disproportionately Black, Brown, immigrant, and LGTBQIA+. We need to be able to bring the economy to a halt in defense of the lives of everyone threatened by fascism. We need to be capable of defending one another and to abolish the capitalist system that’s feeding the rise to fascism again in the first place.
We need revolution. To help everyone get there, let’s discuss and practice class struggle drag defense together. We need the revolutionary power of love.
Atlee McFellin lives in East Cleveland, Ohio and is originally from Battle Creek, Michigan. He was raised in no small part by his late maternal grandmother who was born into a middle-class Catholic family and grew up in Hitler’s Germany.
