“I don’t know if you know, but we’ve had some shit go down in the country since I last saw you a year ago,” Monica Moree, drag queen and emcee for Kansas State’s 21st Annual Drag Show, said to a packed McCain Auditorium on Saturday. “Now what the f*** are you going to do about it?”
Between the dazzling death drops, powerful performances and even a standing ovation for the stage worker who did a jump split while picking up cash between sets, the annual show is a stage for empowerment as much as it is a call to action.
Moree’s comments during the charity show — which raises money for K-State’s LGBTQ students and is matched by Adobe for up to $10,000 — are in response to recent government policies affecting LGBTQ rights.
According to an article from NPR, federal agencies are deleting references to women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community from their websites in compliance with President Trump’s executive orders removing “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility policies.”
The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 569 anti-LGBTQ laws in the U.S., with five of those bills being in Kansas.
“We are here to raise money for queer and trans students fighting for survival in a world that too often tries to erase them,” Moree said. “This drag show is more than just a performance, it’s an act of care, of defiance and of solidarity.”
In the name of defiance and solidarity, the show started off a little differently than it traditionally has this year: with a land acknowledgement.
“We haven’t done these not because it wasn’t important or it didn’t need to be done, but because I felt like the act was performative in the way that it was delivered … they don’t actually admit that we did anything,” Moree said. “We have the government taking away things from us that we have just always come to believe were solid and secure. And so instead of reading a land acknowledgement, I’ve decided … to read a treaty acknowledgement. I want to acknowledge the land beneath us, not just as a stage, but as a place with a long history of relationship, resilience, and struggle.”
Moree acklowledged the Kaw nation, Kanza people, Osage, Pawnee and other indigenous nations that lived in the area long before Kansas was on a map, and highlighted how treaties “were not just broken, they were weaponized.”
“Today, the Kanza Nation has no land in the state that bears their name, and many treaty obligations remain unfilled and untreated,” Moree said. “Treaties are not history, they are living agreements that demand justice, and tonight as we gather in joy and resistance, we carry this forward. … Let this night be of abundance, of shared responsibility, and of lifting one another up, because justice is not given, it is fought for. And whether through treaties, or through queer joy, we remind the world that none of us are free until all of us are free.”
After speaking the last line to the crowd, Moree was met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation before the show had even begun.
The show is made possible by K-State’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance, Union Program Council, Student Governing Association and the Dow Center for Multicultural and Community Studies.
Alongside Moree, this year’s performance featured drag queens Victoria Fox, Lana Luxx, Ty Woo, Lil Kim Chi and Valerie Love, all performing with unique talent, charisma and nerve while advocating for equality and community.
Victoria Foxx, who performed despite breaking a hip a few months prior, got off stage at one point to hug an audience member.
“When I’m not in full eesh here, I am Dusty Garner, and I have a fund [at K-State] called the Dusty Garner Leadership Fund, and this fund provides financial access to trans and queer students for mental health services, gender affirming care services — whatever we can help with, we try to help with,” Moree said. “My company, Adobe, matches one hundred percent of every dollar we make at this event up to 10,000. We maxed it out last year.”
Moree said that there was something specific they wanted to point out, about looking for companies’ actions and not their words.
“We’re watching companies and organizations try to come in line with the chaos that’s happening in DC, and Adobe made the decision this year to roll back all of our DEI programs,” Moree said, as the crowd began to boo. “But they’ve agreed to write us a 10,000 check to support queer and trans mental health. They rolled back their DEI initiatives because if they don’t, they are afraid they will get sued … but they still support this, and they still support pride and they still hire more women than any other tech company in the business … Companies and organizations are just trying to survive, the same way we all are, and sometimes that means that maybe they have to dim their sparkle a little bit.”
Moree said that one of the best ways for individuals to make an impact is to vote for officials who they feel represent them and to rally together alongside minorities.
“I encourage you to find other minority groups who are being shit on, or who are about to be shit on, because … if you think that they won’t come for us by ourselves, you are f***ing mistaken,” Moree said.
Moree urged the audience to protect trans kids, trans Black women, trans people, migrants, minorities, workers and eachother.
“Rise up for eachother, and make a f***ing difference. These election cycles are about to start … we will not have a successful outcome unless you f***ing do something with your boos.”
While the evening centered around escaping gender and sexuality binaries, Moree suggested leaving political binaries as well.
“This really isn’t a fight of left versus right, of conservative versus liberal, it’s bottom versus top,” Moree said. “And … I can tell you the bottom always wins.”
