“Discrimination, bigotry, and hate are not tolerated in our country,” said organizers with WERK for Peace putting together an LGBT parade to the White House.

Video and 360 Video by Ford Fischer
Livestream, Photos and Article by Alejandro Alvarez

Despite the cold, about 300 marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday night in rejection of Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration and refugees.

For the second time in a month, LGBT activism group WERK for Peace held a dance party in Washington, DC as an act of peaceful resistance featuring glow sticks, rainbow suspenders, and glitter (“it’s biodegradable,” the event’s organizers emphasized). News2Share Producer Alejandro Alvarez covered the group’s first action the night before Inauguration Day, a similar dance party which worked its way through suburban northwest DC to then-VP elect Mike Pence’s temporary residence following criticism over his stance on LGBT rights.

Friday’s action, billed as an event “celebrating intersectionality and resistance” in solidarity with Trump’s recent motions against immigrants and refugees, played out in much the same way: a festive rally with dancing, singing, and a sea of rainbow flags and headwear outside Trump’s DC hotel, followed with a dance-off down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. The group’s pickup truck, crowned with Christmas lights and adorned with a cardboard billboard adorned with “#DanceTrumpsHate,” blasted music along the whole parade route to the Secret Service’s security perimeter at Lafayette Square.

“We don’t need #AlternativeFacts,” the group wrote on the event’s Facebook page. “Instead, we embrace and honor the beautiful, magnificent truth of our intersectionality … an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

Apart from the party itself, a number of makeshift signs and caricatures notably mocked recent “Trumpisms” made by the newly-inaugurated president. One man carried a rubber Trump mask on a pole complete with a suit, little hands, and flyaway hair – bundled together with a sign reading “Keep your tiny little hands off our rights.” He got a number of photo requests.

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“If we’ve figured out one thing, it’s that vanity and ego is the way to this guy,” said its creator. “Maybe he sees a picture, maybe somebody else picks up the tiny hands. He’s a child.”

Harald Fuller-Bennett, a DC-area resident, danced with a cape featuring the revolutionary-era Gadsden flag superimposed with the LGBT color flag. Though the Gadsden flag saw a resurgence in the modern era as the rallying banner of the Tea Party movement, Bennett said its roots in the founding of the country were relevant to resistance against Trump.

“The Constitution is our strongest weapon against Donald Trump,” said Bennett.

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