Proud Boys storm reading event hosted by drag queen at California library, deputies say

Members of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, stormed a Drag Queen Story Hour event at a Bay Area library, California authorities said.

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, and deputies are also investigating the harassment of children, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

The incident took place at the San Lorenzo Library at around 1:30 p.m. on June 11, deputies said. Five members of the Proud Boys, “known to be a right-wing hate group with anti-LGBTQ affiliations,” disrupted the event, which had children, parents and other members of the community in attendance, the post said.

The men “began to shout homophobic and transphobic slurs” and were described as “extremely aggressive,” deputies said, adding that they had a “threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety.”

The event’s host, drag queen Panda Dulce, told Buzzfeed News that when the group members arrived, librarians and children were singing a welcome song together, which was “as wholesome as you can imagine.”

Dulce, a social worker and founding member of the Drag Queen Story Hour events, told the outlet that she’s been doing them for five years and that they’re an important means of fostering inclusion and acceptance.

“I can’t describe the spark in a queer kid’s (and yes, we can tell) eyes when they see you,” she told the outlet. “It’s like their gender is being acknowledged for the first time.”

But Dulce has “received death threats, hate mail for doing drag queen story hour” before, and “this time it felt very close to violence,” she told KPIX 5.

And the recent disturbance made attendees, especially children, feel unsafe and “terrified,” Dulce told ABC 7.

“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’,” Dulce told KPIX 5. “(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.’”

In addition to using violent language targeting the LGBTQ community, the members of the Proud Boys were also wearing offensive clothing that displayed white power signs, ABC 7 reported.

Cindy Chadwick, the county librarian, told KTVU that the men “totally freaked out all of the kids,” and that their behavior was extremely inappropriate for a family-friendly event at a library.

No one was injured at the event, and no arrests were made, KTVU reported. After deputies de-escalated the situation and the men left, Dulce came back out and finished the reading.

After the incident, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said it will dedicate resources to protecting the area’s LGBTQ community.

“We will make sure any future events at the library are safe against hate speech and threats of violence,” the sheriff’s office wrote. “As we celebrate Pride Month, we will be swift in our response to any incidents where there are threats to harm members of this community.”

And in the meantime, Dulce told KPIX 5 that she and other LGBTQ people aren’t going to be intimidated out of existence.

“They want us to disappear. They want us to not exist so they don’t have to confront their own discomfort with the idea that there are people different from them in the world,” Dulce said. “But guess what? There are people different from you in the world. And we’re going to stay here. And we’re going to continue doing what we’re doing. And we’re going to be visible about it.”

This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Proud Boys storm reading event hosted by drag queen at California library, deputies say."