Happy (2nd) Qo-Founders Day!
Two years ago today, ten drag performers signed our Call to Action and gave ourselves one year to find out if a drag-led organization could work. We mark that day every year now. This is our second.
Year one was about building the basics: responding to crisis and helping people under attack directly. It culminated in the Drag Defense Handbook and our fiscal sponsorship with the Movement Strategy Center.
Year two was about systemic change, and starting to build what a long-term organization could look like. We expanded who we work with and how we work. We got our first-ever grants. We set the course for an organization built to last.
Year three is our most important year yet: charting out the future.
Here is what we accomplished this year, and what we have planned for our third.
We fought hate groups and organized entire states of performers to fight back against censorship
What we saw this year was different from what we saw in 2024. It was not just a lone bigot with a bullhorn. It was hate groups working hand in hand with hostile law enforcement and state officials, hiding behind laws written to be as vague and as frightening as possible. A vague law is not built to win in court. It is built to make you cancel the show before anyone ever gets there. You cannot answer that one performer at a time. So we started organizing whole states.
In Oklahoma, after the Attorney General called drag obscene and hate groups pressured Bartlesville into canceling Pride, we published a Know Your Rights guide showing performers the law's exemptions and told them not to pre-comply with demands that are not even legal.
In Florida, with the drag ban back in December and the Attorney General subpoenaing venues for their security footage, we ran statewide calls connecting performers from Miami to the Panhandle and published Know Your Rights guidance for the new threat.
In Ohio, when lawmakers came after drag again, we organized to stop them, pulling together performers from Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, and beyond who had never coordinated before.
In Texas, we organized with performers and organizations from across the state against their censorship law and hostile state government, working alongside the ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas.
This is what statewide organizing looks like, run by drag artists with day jobs and shows on weekends, taking on attorneys general and statehouses. Leave a tip and help us keep showing up.
The Kennedy Center shut down drag. We helped shut THEM down.
When Trump named himself chairman of the Kennedy Center and tried to ban drag from the nation's stage, our performers got inside the building. In June 2025, drag artists from our network walked into Trump's first night at the Kennedy Center in full drag and watched him get booed from the audience. The story ran in NPR, Playbill, Entertainment Weekly, The Advocate, Washington Blade, BroadwayWorld, OperaWire, and outlets around the world.
We did not stop at one night. We co-led a petition with MoveOn that has now gathered more than 118,000 signatures, used the momentum to spread the fight into states with hostile lawmakers with 21 performers across 7 states leading petitions in their own backyards, and snatched the narrative back from people trying to write us out of it. Artists pulled out. Board members resigned. Ticket sales dropped by half. In February, the Kennedy Center announced a two-year closure.
We expanded our drag leadership and grew our community
We brought on our first stipend drag organizers, Jack King Goff leading rapid response and Skaði Jötunn keeping the operation running. After two years with no foundation money, we won our first grants this year, from the Unitarian Universalist Funding Program, the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, the Action for Transformation Fund, and the Trans Justice Funding Project.
We formalized our Qo-Founder structure with defined, renewable terms, and we welcomed three new Qo-Founders: Delyla Dalyte, Mari Con Carne, and Solangel Vergara. They join Blaq Dinamyte (our President), Veranda L'ni, Naomi Dix, Sairen Strange, Tiara Kelley, Hysteria Brooks, and Isis Paris York.
Three of our founding Qo-Founders, Maxine LaQueene, Mario Wanna, and Empress Dupree, moved into emeritus roles this year. The OGs. They built this out of thin air, and we would not be here without them.
Our network now includes over 150 performers across the country, more than 70,000 supporters, and over 30 monthly donors who keep the lights on. You built this with us.
Our organizers work for stipends, not salaries. Every tip is what keeps them paid. Leave a tip.
What's next
We have proven we can exist, and we have proven we can fight and win. So we are asking ourselves the harder question now: what does the future look like, and how do we get there?
We are building a real pipeline of drag activists. We're checking in on our programming and how we work. We are looking for funders willing to bet on drag artists running our own defense. And we are working toward a leadership model that does not depend on any one person.
We do not have it figured out. We did not two years ago either, and look at where that got us.
Help us build year three
We are walking into Pride Month with the strongest organization we have ever had and a budget that still depends on too few people doing too much. Become a monthly donor at qommittee.org. Even $10 or $25 a month is what gets us through year three.
Here is to year three. Drag is joy.
