Chicago City Wire

A small but vocal group of conservative activists gathered outside the Edgewater Public Library on June 9 to protest a Drag Story Hour hosted by the Chicago Public Library as part of its Pride Month programming.

Among the most prominent voices at the protest was Zoe Leigh, founder of Chicago Flips Red, a conservative grassroots movement led by Black activists. 

The story hour, aimed at children ages 0 to 5, featured songs, rhymes, and books read by a drag performer. Critics like Leigh argued that events like these push ideological content onto children too young to understand or consent.

Some attendees at the Edgewater Public Library Drag Story Hour protest. | Zoe Leigh

“It’s being taught to the kids,” Leigh told Chicago City Wire. “I'm 39, Black, lesbian—it is being taught to the kids. It's just not normal and you cannot try to make that normal no matter how you try to spin it.” 

Leigh said her sexual orientation does not define her views. 

“I am proud, proud,” Leigh said. “I’ve been out since I was 10-years-old. But I never knew the word. I never knew the letters or anything like that—I just knew what I was trying to do.” 

Despite the controversy, the library’s Drag Story Hour went on as planned inside. 

But outside, the cultural divide was on full display—with activists like Leigh determined to make their voices heard.

Although only nine protesters showed up in person facing an estimated 200 counter-protestors, Leigh said many supporters were watching online or staying silent out of fear. 

“Chicago is very vindictive,” she said. “If they come out and somebody sees them—a lot of people work for the city, the state, or own businesses—they’ll be targeted, get ticketed or have their livelihoods threatened.”

During the Drag Story Hour protest, several Chicago Flips Red members faced aggressive crowd behavior and police intervention. 

Leigh posted a video to X showing the harsh encounters with the crowd. 

Protestors claimed a complaint against their group led to an arrest that was influenced by political pressure from city officials. 

“It was a bunch of garbage,” David Dewar of Trump MAGA Republicans of Illinois told Chicago City Wire of the arrest. Leigh and fellow protesters, including Dewar, argued that the story hour was part of a larger political and cultural agenda. 

In the days leading up to the event, Dewar called it “appalling” and accused it of promoting ideology over literacy.

The same group protested a separate Drag Story Hour event at the Beverly branch of the Chicago Public Library on June 3. 

Echoing Dewar’s concerns, Leigh claimed the content being presented to children was intentionally manipulative.

“We're told that they're not talking about sexual things when it comes to drag story time,” she said. “It's just that they are in drag, reading to the kids. But there are Pride books that they are letting them read.”

Leigh warned of what she views as the long-term consequences of introducing LGBTQ themes to children at an early age.

“The brain for a child—from ages newborn to 10—that's when you be able to teach your child a lot, like at the best time to teach a child a foreign language,” she said. “Right now, you would think that you would be wanting to teach your kid from two to six how to speak Spanish, but you are teaching your kids about gay pride.”

She also questioned how such programming could shape a child’s sense of identity before they are developmentally prepared to make such choices.

“There’s no strict parenting anymore,” she said. “If this is what they want to do, if this is how they feel, then yes—they’re four, they’re three years old. If my child goes to school and identified as Robbie before we left—and that’s his name, Robbie—when he comes home, he wants to be Sarah because of drag story time. That’s a problem.”

Broadening her critique, Leigh linked the rise of LGBTQ-themed education and programming in public institutions to what she sees as a deliberate political strategy that began under former president Barack Obama.

“Honestly, since Obama was president, they prioritized this agenda,” she said. “And this agenda has been harmful to our children. They’ve commercialized it, and made it so that anyone who disagrees is labeled racist, homophobic or misogynistic.”

She also voiced concern over what she perceives as a culture of enforced silence and social pressure surrounding LGBTQ issues.

“It’s gotten to the point that our men are on mute,” Leigh said. “White people alone, uncomfortable truth, on mute, any white person that opposes any type of liberal ideology when it comes to this LGBTQ, they are shunned as this racist.” 

Framing the debate as one of parental authority, Leigh said families—not public institutions—should determine when and how children are introduced to LGBTQ topics.

“A lot of people are waking up, a lot of people are seeing that this doesn't make any sense,” she said. “You're not going to tell me how to parent my child or that I'm a bad parent if I do not agree with LGBTQ being in the schools, because at the end of the day, children should be able to figure it out themselves.”

Leigh pointed to the identity politics pushed by Democratic leadership. 

“It’s gotten to the point that this racial division that the Democratic Party keeps talking about—it’s not there. It’s an imagination grift and money grift to keep that party going,” Leigh said.  

As Pride Month continues, Leigh said the movement she leads will continue speaking out. 

“This is going to be a social media movement and a voting movement,” she said. 

Leigh described what she sees as a growing political realignment, particularly among Black voters who feel disconnected from the Democratic Party’s message.

“Black Americans are leaving the Democratic Party,” she said. 

She went on to argue that Democratic leaders are deliberately embracing radical LGBTQ ideology as a means of securing and maintaining political influence.

“In order to hold on to this, the Democratic Party, they are pushing the LGBTQ agenda, especially the trans agenda,” she said. “They’re pushing the black and brown banner, but it’s really not black and brown.” 

According to Leigh, this strategy is reinforced by an alliance between liberal political elites and a class of Black leaders who, in her view, perpetuate divisive narratives.

“The [Black] elites that have teamed up with the liberal elites, who look down at us and they have taught, have taught that every white man that believes Trump is a good person or if, or, or as a Republican or a conservative, they’re a white supremacist,” she said. “If a person doesn’t agree with LGBTQ, they have every right to not agree with it.”