A group of men believed to be associated with the Proud Boys interrupted an Asian American drag queen’s storytelling event at a library in San Lorenzo, California.
Bay area drag queen Panda Dulce was hosting a children’s reading event for Pride month on Saturday when a group of men barged in.
“Eight to ten Proud Boys marched in with their cameras blazing, point at me, jeering from the back,” Dulce told ABC 7 San Francisco.
The men shouted homophobic and transphobic slurs. They questioned parents for bringing their children to the event, CBS News Bay Area reports.
“It was extremely loud. It was like a cacophony of voices just yelling over one another, taunting me, calling me a groomer, a pedophile, a tranny, and an ‘it’. (They were) interrogating the parents, ‘Why are you bringing your kids to this?’ I didn’t feel safe because one of them was wearing a shirt with an AK-47 on it. And it said ‘kill your local pedophile’,” Dulce told CBS News Bay Area.
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The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department believes the group of men is affiliated with the Proud Boys but has not confirmed whether they are a part of the group, ABC 7 San Francisco reports. The sheriff’s department says they are investigating the incident and have implemented their hate crime protocol.
Many librarians hope they can continue to facilitate events like Saturday’s storytelling session.
“I really believe that libraries are places where everyone is welcome. We are open to every member of our community, and we can’t be bowed or intimidated by these kinds of threats. This is not what we’re going to stand for,” Alameda County Librarian, Cindy Chadwick, told ABC 7 San Francisco.
Dulce says she does not feel safe in her own home but that does not mean she is going anywhere.
“They were successful in scaring us, but they weren’t successful in their ultimate goal which is to make us go away because of their own discomfort with the diversity of our world. They failed in that,” Dulce told ABC 7 San Francisco.
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