Hundreds of demonstrators flowed downtown from Bryant Park on Saturday, June 28, for the 33rd annual New York City Dyke March, which adopted a solid anti-Zionist stance and explicitly anti-fascist tone.
Self-identifying dykes led the march, themed “Dykes Say No to Fascism,” to Washington Square Park with a “Free Free Palestine” banner. At the head of the protest, marchers carried mass-distributed signs featuring large white text calling for an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which has been characterized as a genocide by several human rights groups. Other signs supported Black liberation, condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and affirmed that the fight for LGBTQ+ rights is far from over.
Also leading the protest was a 20-foot papier-mâché dinosaur. The pastel-colored creature is called Sapphasaura, artist Anna Moustakerski explained to Hyperallergic, and made as an homage to the 1973 protest against anti-feminist exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History. The Lesbian Feminist Liberation Zap hauled a 250-foot dinosaur of the same name down Broadway more than five decades ago, demanding changes to the museum’s programming.
The version of Sapphasaura present in this year’s march, however, was covered with messages of love that the artists asked the public to address to future generations.
“We kind of think of it as a big, totally dominating monster that is urgently carrying everyone’s messages,” Moustakerski told Hyperallergic. The multicolored missives told future generations to “be gay” and “fight fascism.”
In the months leading up to Saturday’s protest, this year’s organizing committee announced a firm anti-Zionist stance that also denounced antisemitism: “Our critique is directed at a political system and ideology, not at Jewish people or Judaism,” the Dyke March’s Statement of Values reads. Conservative outlets reported in April that the march had outright banned Zionists from attending, which an NYC Dyke March spokesperson denied to Hyperallergic.
“The NYC Dyke March has not banned Zionists as an entire group, but rather … articulated a firmly anti-Zionist position,” the spokesperson told Hyperallergic in an email.
“[A] commitment to anti-Zionist values is a direct response to the dyke community at large that has overwhelmingly shown broad support for the liberation of all oppressed people,” the spokesperson continued, “which includes the people of Palestine that have been under military occupation for much longer than the Dyke March has been in place as a political organizing space.”
As in previous years, the Dyke March defined itself as a “protest march, not a parade.” Last year’s demonstration, themed “Dykes Against Genocide,” garnered criticism after its planning committee issued a statement stating that there was space within the dyke movement to recognize both the impacts of the October 7 attacks on the Jewish community and Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza. The group retracted its Instagram statement 30 minutes later, saying that the committee had not agreed to publish the post. This year, the march appears to have a more organized response to ongoing violence.
Aya Sternoff, who was standing behind the table, told Hyperallergic that they had observed a general fatigue in protesting over the last two years. More recently, however, Sternoff has seen a “surge in social struggle.”
Glimmers of optimism shone through the anti-Trump, anti-fascist, anti-war, and anti-violence protest in the form of signs nodding to Zohran Mamdani’s recent democratic primary win in a race that was largely expected to be all but handed over to disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Some marchers held simple campaign signs, while others added Zohran’s name to their own handwritten placards.
Performance artist Mary Magdalene lit up faces with her large speaker on wheels and “God” sign. She bent in half and twerked in front of police officers, who attempted to remain stoic. At one point, she climbed on top of a New York Police Department vehicle and danced to applause from passing marchers.
Writer and activist Sarah Schulman, who was one of the co-founders of the march and a founding member of the group Lesbian Avengers, expressed approval of this year’s march on X.
“I am so proud, 33 years later, as thousands march in NYC w/ a ‘Dykes Say No To Fascism’ banner and for Palestinian liberation, without corporate sponsorship,” Schulman wrote. “Still organic. Still ahead. Still a freedom vision.”
