Overcast skies and cool weather could not keep more than 500 people from Dyke March Chicago this year. The June 25 rally kicked off with drum beats and chants in the city's South Shore neighborhood, snaking for several blocks in a mass of rainbow flags and banners.
Onlookers from apartments and sidewalks cheered and waved to the crowd, and drivers honked their horns in a show of support. Even young children came out to see the march, some of them chanting with the marchers.
The march stepped off at South Jeffrey Blvd., continued along the bike path on Lakeshore drive, and concluded with performances and a picnic in Jackson Park.
Leora Abelson, a Dyke March Collective member, called the event was a major success.
"There was amazing energy from the cars and people from apartments walking up Jeffrey [Blvd.]," she said.
Dyke March Chicago, an annual event held in major cities nationally, functions as a kind of rag-tag alternative to the larger pride parades. Unlike the Chicago Annual Pride Parade, participating groups need not pay or register. The event also tends to draw a more radical contingent of queer community organizers and activists, and its message tends to weave queer politics with other struggles such as immigrant rights, women's rights, transgender empowerment, racial justice, and disability pride.
This year marks the second and final year of the march's stay in South Shore. The march will move to another neighborhood next year due to an agreement among organizers that the event bring queer visibility to a different neighborhood biennially.
Many marchers seemed to be thrilled by the warm welcome South Shore residents gave the crowd, where the march concluded without incident. Some commented that South Shore's response to the march drove home the importance of exhibiting queer-friendly neighborhoods outside of Boystown.
"What we're doing is bringing queer visibility to neighborhoods across the city," said Emilia Chico, a principal organizer of the event. "It's specifically challenging what pride has become."
Not all who attend Dyke March choose to forgo the Annual Pride Parade.
Amelia Hill, a recent graduate from Illinois State University, traveled up from Normal, Ill., with friends to attend both event for the first time. Hill said she was impressed with the neighborhood's overwhelmingly supportive response and with the diversity of political issues represented by marchers.
"I like the radical attitude [of the march]," she said. "A lot of the time I feel like the most radical person in a place … but here is different."
Hill said she is looking forward to comparing the parade and that march.
According to Abelson, organizers faced significant challenges in putting together this year's Dyke March. Membership in the collective that organizes the march was nearly a third of what it has been in past years, with just four people orchestrating the bulk of the planning.
"It just really demonstrates if something needs to happen, it will," Abelson said.
Participating groups included the Stone Soup Collective, the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois, Broadway Youth Center, Orgullo en Accion, Gender JUST, the L Stop, Genderqueer Chicago and Sex Workers Outreach Project. Photos by Kat Fitzgerald ( MysticImagesPhotography.com )