Drag queens Wadsworth, Ohio: Arrests made after protest at story hour

Oct 30, 2023

Editor's Note: This article, originally published Saturday and updated Sunday with more information, was updated again Monday after the Wadsworth Police Department said an arrested man was found with a pepper spray gun and not a gun that shoots bullets.

Hundreds of protesters, including armed white supremacists, and LGBT-community supporters descended on Wadsworth's Memorial Park on Saturday as a humanist group tried to put on a drag queen storytelling event for children.

Toward the end of the four-hour event, two people charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct were arrested after a series of melees involving pepper spray, the violent use of a flag pole as a weapon and a protester who unnerved witnesses when he pointed a gun at a crowd. (Police said Monday that the weapon is designed to shoot pepper spray and not bullets.)

Wadsworth Police Chief Dan Chafin said Sunday that he was aware of the footage of the alleged handgun but couldn't comment further pending an investigation. The man wielding the metallic object, along with another who supported the event, were jailed.

Police who arrested the man "confirmed that this object was NOT a firearm, but a Kimber less-lethal PepperBlaster device," the Wadsworth Police Department said in a post Monday. "This device looks very similar to a firearm and has a trigger which deploys the pepper spray."

With vehicles at the event bearing out-of-state license plates, according to some who attended, Chafin said police lost track of the crowd count at around 200 people. Police from Medina city and county, Brunswick, Brunswick Hills, Hinckley, Seville, Montville, the county drug task force and the Ohio State Highway Patrol assisted Wadsworth police in patrolling and securing the event. Paramedics from across the region were on hand.

Chafin said the "Rock-n-Roll Humanist Drag Queen Story Hour" event did proceed as planned and permitted by the city, but the situation remained volatile from start to finish with neo-Nazis yelling racial slurs from behind metal barricades and attendees, including parents and children, being followed by protesters into and out of the event.

Protesters vastly outnumbered supporters.

White supremacist and white nationalist groups, including at least one participant wearing a Proud Boys hoodie, shouted racist and homophobic slurs at onlookers and others, including "Heil Hitler" and a man on a loudspeaker who chanted "Sieg" as protesters responded: "Heil!"

One person who attended the event to protest the age appropriateness of people in drag reading to children said he was "shocked" to see and hear what white supremacists were saying.

A few demonstrators yelled, "Nazis, go home."

A Black reporter from the Beacon Journal assigned to cover the event left, for his own safety, after being called a racial slur several times by protesters. Video of the event posted by attendees and a documentary filmmaker shows a bald, white man swinging a black flag with a white swastika. Members of the neo-Nazi's group point out the few Black people at the event.

"How does it feel being a pedophile?" one man in the white supremacist group says.

"There's a gay (racial profanity) right there," another man replies in the video, which has been viewed 1 million times on Twitter.

Protesters carried signs for "White lives matter" and "Mothers against grooming," which refers to the alleged process of building trust with children or families with the ultimate aim of child sexual abuse.

One supporter who attended the event said the goal was "not to turn children gay but to keep gay children alive."

Although the organizer of the drag show obtained a permit to present the show, it had been controversial from the start, with Wadsworth City Council President Bob Thurber saying in a statement Sunday that it had been promoted in a manner harmful to the city.

A Wadsworth resident, Aaron Reed, promoted the event in the public space after a private venue in the city declined to host it.

Drag Queen Story Hour:Dispute over drag performance for kids bubbles over at Wadsworth City Council meeting

Initially the event had been criticized on Facebook and in media accounts largely because it had been promoted for children. Others supported the idea of an event designed for children and parents. Reed has said the planned attire and music was appropriate for kids, with profanity edited from some songs.

The city of Wadsworth in a public statement prior to the event said that "after much discussion and legal review, we have no choice but to let the event take place." In a letter sent to residents, Wadsworth Public Safety Director Matt Hiscock and Chief Chafin advised that "you, your family and those you know avoid being in the park if at all possible during the time of the event."

White supremacists and white nationalist groups have descended on and disrupted Drag Queen Story Hour events from Boston to Colorado. In December outside a public library where a show was canceled in the eclectic, north-central Columbus neighborhood of Clintonville, White Lives Matter Ohio and others celebrated the cancellation with neo-Nazi slogans and gestures.

Parasol Patrol, a nonprofit organization that travels to support progressive events, came from Colorado with their rainbow umbrellas to shield parents and children from protesters. Local people attending in support of the LGBTQ community took the group's instruction and an umbrella.

Co-Founder Pasha Ripley, speaking on Facebook live Sunday, said: "Honestly, this should be a national story. It really should."

Parasol Patrol co-founder Eli Bazan said he thought the man who pulled the pepper spray gun had actually brandished a small .22 caliber pistol and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun did not fire.

"It appeared that he was shooting at somebody right past me. But it would have went through my umbrella," said Bazan.

The man was later arrested for fighting with a supporter.

No one was injured as a result of violence at the event, Chafin said. One person twisted a knee and another had a seizure. Paramedics treated them both.

Chafin said two people were arrested, one in support of the event and another who was there to protest. Footage of the arrests was posted on social media by a documentarian following a series of melees.

The first altercation appears to have started as McKenzie Levi approaches a crowd of attendees and Parasol Patrol escorts. Levi told the Beacon Journal that he's been dressing in medieval armor and providing "independent public safety at Cleveland protests since 2017, always dressed as a Crusader."

He said he was trying to "break up" a skirmish when someone unleashed mace. In the video, Levi steps away and holds his face in his hands, complaining to the police that the man with the mace should be arrested.

During this episode, a man in tan overalls pulls the pepper spray gun from his pocket and points it toward the person who just used mace. A police officer is only feet away from the man with the pepper spray gun, but the officer's eyes are trained on the crowd of attendees.

Police pull the man with the mace aside and then let him go.

The man in overalls is later seen face to face with a woman. The two are yelling. A man in a rainbow suit comes up from behind the woman and puts his retracted rainbow umbrella between the two to protect the woman.

When the umbrella touches the man in overalls, the man in overalls hits the man in the rainbow suit with a flagpole.

Kristopher Anderson, a Republican from Akron who has run for local and state office, said the man in overalls was part of his group. In the three weeks before the drag queen story hour, Anderson said he and others had organized a protest at the event that would push for drag queen storytelling to be limited to adults only. About 90 people said they would join Anderson's group.

"Around noon, out of our complete shock, we had the white supremacist and white Nazi groups show up," said Anderson. He said his group did not make contact with anyone espousing racist views.

"We were chanting 'don't groom your kids' and all those other things," said Anderson, who described the overt racist messaging of some groups as a "distraction more than anything."

"We weren't all on one side," Anderson said of the many groups protesting the event. "These were like factions against an issue."