Chicago Flips Red dances for Pharaoh; scapegoats fellow people of color, LGBTQ

Image: Screenshot of Chicago Flips Red website.

Today, the Rev. Kristin Hutson and people in our circle marched in counterprotest against this hateful group.

Let me speak plain.

Let me speak truth.

And let me speak with fire.

To Chicago Flips Red, that nasty organization protesting Drag Story Hour at the Edgewater Branch of the Chicago Public Library today—I say this with every ounce of righteous anger I can muster:

You are not standing for freedom.

You are not standing for God.

You are not standing for righteousness.

You are standing for Pharaoh.

You are dancing for Caesar.

How dare you!

How dare you show up in my neighborhood, my Chicago, with your self-righteous signs and MAGA-aligned hatred, trying to tear down an event meant to uplift children with love, color, creativity, and joy?

You try to wrap yourself in faith, in community, in concern for the youth—but let’s tell the truth!

Your protest was nothing but fear, ignorance, and a poisonous obedience to White Christian nationalism.

You want to say Drag Story Hour is the problem?

No, the real problem is your blindness to the real enemy!

You blame LGBTQ people for the wealth you’ve lost?

You blame immigrants for the jobs you can’t find?

You blame the vulnerable because the powerful fed you red meat lies and told you that if you beat down the others in the pit, you might just climb your way out?

That is the devil’s deal. And you took it.

You are Black-led—but you have aligned yourself with the very same empire that lynched your ancestors, the same empire that denied you loans, denied you land, denied you justice.

You have sided with the same systems that burned Black Wall Street, that redlined your neighborhoods, that poisoned your water, that jailed your sons, that closed your schools, that stripped you of voting rights.

And now you’re out here shouting for them?

You should be ashamed.

What you did today is not holy protest.

It is betrayal.

It is the betrayal of every ancestor who marched, who prayed, who bled, who died for the dignity of every person of color, every queer person, every immigrant soul who dared to dream of liberty.

You are playing the same old game America has played again and again: Divide and conquer.

Blame the “other.”

Strip power from the people.

Turn neighbor against neighbor.

It was used against Jews, Italians, Irish, Hawaiians, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans. It was used to enslave and silence. And now you’re helping them use it again.

Let me remind you—Jesus never condemned a drag queen, but he sure did overturn the tables of hypocrites like you.

Jesus never threw stones at the different.

He dined with them.

He healed them.

He walked with them.

You claim to be Christian, but your words speak Herod, not Christ.

Your actions shout Rome, not redemption.

You cannot serve both God and empire.

You cannot claim love and preach hate.

This is not a difference of opinion. This is not just a policy dispute. This is spiritual warfare.

And when you show up to protest joy, when you aim your fire at the most marginalized among us, then you have chosen your master—and it is not the Lord.

Repent, Chicago Flips Red.

Or stand aside when the people of God—queer and straight, Black and Brown, immigrant and native—rise up like Moses, like Esther, like Jesus, like Harriet, and say to the Pharaohs of this land: LET MY PEOPLE GO.

Because we will be free.

We will be seen.

And no protest, no lie, no puppet movement of the powerful will stop that Holy Fire.