09/06/2026
This First Friday was a wild one! Last month, right-wing grifter Corey Blair of the floundering “Break the Chains Media” made a few videos of our protest that received significantly more engagement than the single-digit reacts his posts usually get. Predictably, that brought a wave of new wanna-be influencers to Friday’s protest, all hoping to boost their public profiles and make a few dollars mocking q***r people protesting for their rights.
This time, in addition to Blair, we saw Wayne Laugesen, a right-wing AM radio personality intent on provoking protesters; his cameraperson lackey, Jorge Stakis; and the queen of performative outrage, Angela Rose. All of these jokers tried to provoke reactions from protesters — hoping to turn our struggle into social media content — but between the grifters’ bad breath and even worse personalities, protesters knew to avoid them.
Another loser who uses the name “First Amendment Media” also made an appearance. When a woman blocked his camera because she didn’t want to be filmed, he pulled out a can of pepper spray and an umbrella and started threatening to mace people for obstructing him. This charade went on for upwards of an hour, with him eventually trying to get the police involved. They were happy to try to repress the protest, but they found no crime after reviewing the boy who cried wolf’s footage.
These grifters are ultimately incidental. They don’t care that the community doesn’t want Drip here, and they definitely don’t care whether Drip stays open. Their only concern is raising their own public profiles in the hopes of becoming the next Charlie Kirk (before his assassination).
We had seen most of these right-wing wanna-be influencers earlier at the high school walk out against ICE, where their agitation got a chilly reception to say the least. They are not really activists or organizers, but social media personalities who leech off of progressive movements to clip farm and rage bait.
Despite the distractions, we had a great and effective protest. The Art Walk crowd and local scene are as supportive as ever, with people walking by and starting “F**k Drip!” chants completely unprompted. A mother of two trans girls came up and told us how important our struggle is during a time of increasing q***r repression, and how the protests serve as a symbol of hope for q***r youth in Denver.
That is ultimately what matters. Denverites don’t want a hub for bigotry downtown, and the grifters and reactionaries who come out to support Drip mostly succeed in annoying locals and drawing even more attention to the problems Drip creates in the community.
Drip now finds itself trapped in a contradiction: its alliance with these grifters is one of the only ways it can get the media attention and donations it needs to stay open, but those same grifters also drive away the local clientele Drip would need to survive as an actual business.
Drip was bound to see a rise in support after last month’s uptick in media attention, including a national Fox News story. About two dozen out-of-towners came to awkwardly stand in front of Drip, half-heartedly trying to play defense for it. Often, this amounts to them insisting that Drip “loves” the protesters — despite the slurs, deadnames, intentional misgendering, and everything else — to which we’ll often respond, “Then why do they oppose gay rights?” Inevitably, this is met with some thought-terminating cliché like “Christ is king.”
It’s exhausting, and it highlights why the focus of the protest is engaging with the Art Walk crowd and informing them about Drip, rather than wasting time trying to reason with Drip and its supporters.
After this past weekend, the necessity of removing this reactionary stronghold from Denver could not be more apparent. Our struggle against Drip will continue on the First Friday of next month, and every First Friday until they close. Come join us and help show that the LGBTQIA+ community won’t be intimidated and won’t back down.
