Bash Back! is a network of radical, anarchist queer projects within the United States. Formed in Chicago in 2007 to facilitate a convergence of radical trans and gay activists from around the country,[1] Bash Back! seeks to critique the ideology of the mainstream LGBT movement, which the group sees as assimilation into the dominant institutions of a heteronormative society. Bash Back! is noticeably influenced by the anarchist movement and radical queer groups, such as ACT UP and Gay Shame, and takes inspiration from the Stonewall and San Francisco's White Night riots.[2]
Since 2007, other chapters have formed and have carried out various direct actions across the US.
According to their website, anyone can form a Bash Back! chapter as long as they adhere to the basic points of unity:
The first Bash Back! Convergence was held in April 2008. The goal of the convergence was to form ideas for the then-upcoming protests at the DNC and the RNC, and discuss the formation of new Bash Back! chapters in other regions of the country. As a result, groups in Milwaukee, Memphis, Denver, Lansing, and upstate New York sprung up as new chapters.
Together, members of the newly formed Bash Back! groups took to the streets of Chicago's Boystown neighborhood in protest of assimilationist politics, trans-exclusion in the gay community, and recent police assaults on trans and queer people. The unpermitted march was eventually dispersed when a mob surrounded the Chicago Police's Addison/Halsted headquarters, reading aloud statistics of trans and queer people killed by police brutality.[3]
In June 2008, the neo-Nazi organization the National Socialist Movement, released a statement that announced its intention to demonstrate at Milwaukee's annual Pridefest as a statement that the Nazis do not support "the promotion of homosexuality in [their] community".[4] In response, Bash Back! Milwaukee planned a confrontation of the hate group.[5] A group of more than twenty confronted members of the NSM, carrying a banner proclaiming "These Faggots Kill Fascists."[6] The action prompted Pridefest organizers to criticize Bash Back!. Members of Bash Back! Milwaukee in turn denounced the organizers as betraying the queer community, stating "They would rather see well protected neo-nazis than a well-defended queer and trans community. Nobody will protect us if not ourselves."[7]
Bash Back! Chicago carried out a number of actions during their city's Pride Weekend in 2008. The first was participation in the annual Dyke March in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Bash Back!'s contingent in the march focused on resistance to gentrification in the Pilsen community,[8] with a large lead banner stating "Bash Back Against Gentrification!"[9]
In addition, members of Bash Back! also took part in Chicago's larger Pride Parade. Bash Back! Chicago wheeled a cage through the parade containing a member dressed as Chicago's Mayor Daley, whom the group believes is responsible for cutting AIDS funding, turning a blind eye to police torture and brutality, and supporting gentrification. Simultaneously, members of Bash Back! also distributed barf bags with slogans written on them such as "Corporate Pride Makes Me Sick," a statement about the commercial and assimilative intentions of mainstream gay culture.[10]
In 2008, Mid-South Pride, organizers of the Memphis Pride Festival, announced that the 2008 festival would be co-anchored by Nike and called the move an "expansion opportunity for the GLBT citizens of the city". Outraged, Bash Back! Memphis wheatpasted fliers along Cooper Street the night before the march condemning Nike's sweatshop practices and mainstream gay culture. The following day, as the Memphis Pride march proceeded under the Cooper-Young railroad trestle, several BB! members dropped a banner reading "Queer Liberation, not Queer Consumerism".
At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Bash Back! Denver organized a protest of a fundraiser for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights lobby group. Bash Back! Denver criticized the HRC for its policies of trans exclusion in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, as well as the HRC's support for corporate interests and the Iraq War. The action ended in the detention of four activists at the scene and the arrest of one.[11]
Bash Back! also organized a "trans and queer bloc" as part of the larger black bloc of the Anti-Capitalista Day of Action. The event ended in the detention of most participants, and several bystanders.[12]
The following day, Bash Back! continued to counter-protest, especially against conservatives holding signs reading things like "homo-sex is a sin" by having a queer kiss-in.[13]
At the 2008 Republican National Convention, members of various Bash Back! groups from around the country participated in a road blockade as a part of Unconventional Action's direct action strategy to disrupt the convention. BB seized an intersection in downtown St. Paul and blocked cars and delegate buses from passing by having a festive dance party. The blockade was eventually met with force by mounted police and the activists were forced to disperse. Soon afterwards, members of Bash Back! also confronted the Westboro Baptist Church when they appeared at the intersection where Bash Back! conducted its action.[14]
On October 4, 2008, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) held its annual dinner in Washington DC. Bash Back! DC confronted the organization once again for publicly not supporting a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the House of Representatives in 2007.[15] About 20 protestors gathered for a dance party at the front doors of the fundraiser with signs such as “HRC Is Not For Me” and “Stonewall Was a Riot”.[16] Dandee Lyon, a member of Bash Back! DC, stated that the reason for the protest was that "assimilation will not save us, it will only end in the decimation of our community. Society must change to accommodate us, queers and transfolk must refuse assimilation and cultural erasure at the hands of the homonormative gay elite and build a world where we can liberate ourselves."[17]
While a contingent from Bash Back!'s Lansing chapter picketed outside Mount Hope Church on November 9, 2008, several Bash Back! members entered the building disguised in plain-clothes and interrupted a worship service at the megachurch in Lansing, MI. During the late morning service the group dropped a rainbow banner bearing the slogan "It's Okay to Be Gay! Bash Back!" from the sanctuary balcony and showered a thousand fliers exhorting sexually confused teenagers who might be in the congregation to "embrace and explore" their new feelings and assuring them there are many organizations supportive of gays that "enable you to be who you truly are."[18][19][20]
According to Bash Back! News, Mount Hope Church was targeted for its fundamentalist belief that homosexuality is a sin, for its production of "hell houses" that demonize gays, and for its hosting of conferences of "ex-gays".[19][20][21]
In May 2009 Alliance Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit against Bash Back! on behalf of the church, under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.[22][23]
In November 2008, to coincide with transgender day of remembrance, Bash Back! groups began staging actions in memory of Duanna Johnson, a transwoman who was brutally beaten by Memphis police officers and murdered while in the process of suing the police department. Many within the Memphis queer community are convinced that the police had a hand in her murder. Bash Back! Philly shut down downtown Philadelphia in a reclaim-the-streets style action,[24] Bash Back! Milwaukee dropped a banner on the UW-M campus reading "R.I.P. Duanna", and Bash Back! Memphis had a hearse and casket delivered to the house of Bridges McRae, one of Duanna's assailants.[25]
An affiliate group of Bash Back! claimed credit for pouring glue into the locks of an LDS (Mormon) church building and spray painting on its walls. An internet posting signed by Bash Back!’s Olympia, Washington chapter said: “The Mormon church ... needs to be confronted, attacked, subverted and destroyed.”[26] According to the Chicago Tribune, the acts of vandalism against the LDS Church appear to be in retaliation for support of Proposition 8.[26] The Anti-Defamation League released a statement condemning the "defacement and destruction of property."[27]
On October 11, 2009 the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington, DC was vandalized by radical queer activists who threw pink and black paint and glitter at the building and left graffiti reading "Quit Leaving Queers Behind".[28] The vandalism came on the eve of the National Equality March, the biggest national queer political mobilization since 2000 and hours after President Barack Obama gave a speech at an HRC fundraiser. A group called Queers Against Assimilation posted a statement about the action on the website of radical queer network Bash Back!. The statement called the attack an act of "glamdalism."
There are Bash Back! chapters in each of the following cities and areas: