Grassroot Queers records

Grassroot Queers was a nonhierarchical queer activist organization active in Philadelphia from 1993 through 1999. The group was comprised of diverse membership with folks of all genders, races and sexualities that came into existence after Queer Action, Philadelphia’s Queer Nation chapter, dissolved in the early 1990s. Grassroot Queers' initiatives targeted institutions that oppressed, disenfranchised and ignored the LGBTQ community at the local and national level, while other events were aimed at bringing this community together and raising their visibility among the rest of society.

Their Fight the Right campaign culminated in a town hall meeting in April 1994 to organize against the political and religious right. They held the Bitter Queer Cafe as a forum to discuss queer issues and brought the LGBTQ community together for their annual Queer X-mas Carolling events. Grassroot Queers went on to organize a boycott of the Adolph Coors Foundation in 1995 because of its monetary contributions to homophobic groups. In 1995, Grassroot Queers organized Queerstock to celebrate the queer community in Philadelphia with assorted public events, games and contests. They held their first annual Drag King Contest in 1995 which ran until 1996. Grassroot Queers rallied around the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Colorado’s Amendment 2 in 1996, an act that had criminalized homosexuality. That same year, they also held a Queer Wedding on Ice that called for marriage equality and pushed then Mayor Ed Rendell to uphold his promise to grant domestic partnership rights in the city of Philadelphia.