The 2020 decision from the Northalsted Business Alliance (NHBA) to drop the Boystown name in its marketing and advertisements was intended to acknowledge and begin to address the community’s longstanding history of Black LGBTQ+ exclusion, particularly women, trans people, and nonbinary folks. But according to Drag March organizers, it’s going to take a lot more than a name change to create an equitable and welcoming environment for all queer and trans folks.
“We still need faces and bodies of Black and Brown people at the table that makes the decisions, and that hasn’t happened yet,” said Jo Mama, a Chicago drag artist who co-organized the march with Chante. “I’m still bringing that up to people and saying, ‘You need to make sure this is happening.’”
The Chicago Drag Council, which Chante and Jo Mama helped to form in June of 2020, gathered all the general managers of LGBTQ+ spaces on the North Side at a first-of-its-kind roundtable discussion that month. According to Jo Mama, managers made a verbal promise to improve representation in programming, hire diverse staff, commit to restorative justice, and to implement a zero-tolerance policy for racism, transphobia, and ableism in their venues.
A year later, have they kept true to their promises? Yes and no, Chante says. “What happens when the dust settles?” they asked. “Will you go back to your old ways? How are you going to prepare yourself to make this change long-lasting?”
At this weekend’s Drag March, Chante presented a “progress report” in which they rated a list of Northalsted businesses that they have visited since receiving their COVID-19 vaccine this spring. Each establishment was judged on the diversity of the staff and performers: Were the bars booking Black drag queens and kings? Was the environment safe and welcoming for queer and trans people of color?
According to Chante’s progress report, a portion of the venues had made noticeable steps to increase the diversity and representation of their performers, hosts, and producers. But bars remain overwhelmingly staffed by white, cis people and failing to provide a welcoming environment to Black and Brown trans people.
“We need to change that dynamic as well, if we really are going to take a step toward any sort of equality in the Northalsted area,” Chante says.
Calls for equity also extend to protecting the community’s most vulnerable from violence. Currently, 2021 is threatening to surpass 2020 as the deadliest year on record for transender people, and several killings from both years took place in Chicago. The April murder of Tiara Banks, a 24-year-old woman killed in the West Pullmaniam neighborhood, marked Chicago’s third homicide involving a a Black, trans victim in four months. Selena Reyes-Hernandez, a 37-year-old Latina woman, was murdered by an intimate partner last June.
