All Age Drag Show

This segment covers an event last weekend where the LCP news team went and attempted to do a follow-up story on the all age drag phenomenon in Humboldt, this time at College of the Redwoods.

Lets do a little recap on some key events that have led us to where we are …

You all might remember the Halloween all age drag show at the Jefferson Center? It led to the original resolution on hate speech, first at the city of Eureka and then at the county level following the proclamation by the Human Rights Commission. 

All of which chastised citizens who were legitimately concerned with the illicit content of the performance in front of young children, all of which who did not even acknowledge such illicit content within the show. A practice that was mimicked by local media outlets such as Lost Coast Outpost, which sensationalized their narrative of “hateful,” concerned parents and failing to mention what they were in fact concerned about. 

This continued over the next few months, spilling over into the small community of Ferndale, with another all age drag event that was protested by St Marks church on their marquee signage. The reaction by local media was nearly identical to that of the reaction to the Jefferson Center event. Sensationalizing a narrative of hate without even reaching out to talk to Pastor Bramwell, something that the team at Lost Coast Populist actually did. 

Earlier this year, both Pastor Bramwell, of Saint Marks, and Kaelan Rivera, of Lost Coast Pride, did in-depth interviews on the Growing Pains podcast with Nick Flores. In the interview with Rivera, it was acknowledged that there was in fact inappropriate behavior such as cash tipping and sexualized dancing in front of young children at the Jefferson Center event. 

After the blowback from the marquee at St Marks, the Ferndale drag show was moved to a later date and held at College of the Redwoods – a event that Rivera described in his Flores interview as being better planned and more appropriate for children, unlike the Jefferson Center show.  

Strangely enough when we went to the College of the Redwood event to try and film a follow up to the Jefferson story, we ran to see what kind of changes had been made to make the show more appropriate we were denied access to the event by CR staff and their private police force. 

Not only were our First Amendment rights to record this controversial event as members of the press denied on a public college campus, we were also informed that free speech itself for protesters was limited on the campus to the parking lot, a free speech zone as they called it. 

I would ask all of you where it says in the Constitution that free speech shall be limited to the parking lot at College of the Redwoods? And does it not look bad that a drag show for children claiming to be more child friendly and appropriate than the previous was held behind closed doors, with armed guards blocking local media from recording and reporting on the event? 

If you watched our other special segment focusing on the hate speech narrative within local government and local media, you will remember that the chair of the Human Rights Commission attended this all aged drag show and took note of our presence trying to film it. You might also notice that he described our inability to do so as a victory amongst his peers. It almost seems as if he has very clear bias as to how he views the community and certain groups within it.