Marchers With Jewish Flags Banned from Chicago Dyke March

Although a wide swath of the LGBTQ community was represented at Chicago's 2017 Dyke March, some marchers were angered when organizers ejected three people who were waving a Jewish Pride flag.

The Windy City Media Group reports that the annual protest march attracted more than 1,500 marchers as it moved through its new route in the Little Village neighborhood. Representatives negotiated with 22nd Ward Ald. Ricardo Munox and the Chicago Police Department to have the west-bound lanes of 26th Street shut down, as the city would not issue a permit to organizers.

Marchers held aloft banners supporting minority communities and condemning abusive government practices as they came upon a small group of Christian extremists at the Piotrowski Park rally area. People formed a human barrier two lines deep and held up gay Pride flags to block the anti-gay group from ruining the celebrations.

But some marchers were nonplussed when they discovered they were the target of a similar boycott. Three marchers carrying Jewish Pride flags (a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center) were ejected from the parade when Dyke March collective members told them the flags "made people feel unsafe" and that the march was "anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian."

Newsweek reports that marcher Laurel Grauer said she was harassed and asked to leave, and take her flag with her.

"It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag," said Grauer. "They were telling me to leave because my flag was a trigger to people that they found offensive. Prior to this [march] I had never been harassed or asked to leave and I had always carried the flag with me."

Some have described Israel's backing of LGBT rights as 'pinkwashing' to detract from their ongoing conflict with Palestine. But this rankled some marchers like Ruthie Steiner.

"I'm German-born. Am I pinkwashing by being here and supporting my community? Is every nation which does not have a clean civil-rights record and also hosts a Pride parade guilty of pinkwashing? With all the people that so hate the LGBTQ community, for it to tear itself apart in self-hatred makes no sense at all," said Steiner.

A statement from posted June 25 on Dyke March Chicago social media accounts read in part that, "Sadly, our celebration of dyke, queer and trans solidarity was partly overshadowed by our decision to ask three individuals carrying Israeli flags superimposed on rainbow flags to leave the rally. This decision was made after they repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Dyke March Collective members."

The group A Wider Bridge replied with a press release of their own, saying, "The Dyke March has failed to live up to their goal of 'bridging together communities.' That the organizers would choose to dismiss long-time community members for choosing to express their Jewish identity or spirituality runs counter to the very values the Dyke March claims to uphold, and veers down a dangerous path toward anti-semitism."