Around 20 students and community members protested on the sidewalk outside Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School Feb. 6 following the Rainbow District School Board’s cancellation of a drag event that was to take place at the school this week.
Mohamed said during the protest the decision to cancel the drag event is “coming from a board that claims to have inclusion and equity at the centre of its operation. He said he held today’s protest as the next step in voicing the students’ concerns about the situation. Mohamed said he’d also like to meet further with Rainbow board officials, “and if they’re not willing to listen to us, there will be more protests.
Mohamed said in an interview during the Monday protest the board is “using an age-old stereotype about queer people that we are deviants, that we are sexually hypersexual. It is truly discriminatory, and we will not stand for it. So that's why we are here, because we want an apology for that reason.”
When we reached out to the Rainbow board in advance of today’s protest, the board issued a written statement with much the same content as previous statements issued by the board on the topic of the cancelled drag show. The Grade 10 Lo-Ellen student said she’s always wanted to see a drag show, and wanted to speak to the performers about her own experiences of exploring her queer identity in recent years. Lachance said she’ll be attending the Collège Boréal show with her mother.Cory Gaudette, a local drag queen, said he was there to support the queer students at Lo-Ellen. “I just knew I needed to show up,” said Gaudette, adding that as a drag queen, “I feel very personally attacked right now.
What a messed up world we live in , lmfao…