A Pride Month drag show in the Sacramento area was forced to reschedule after far-right extremists disrupted the event on Thursday evening, officials said.
A Yolo County group for LGBTQ youth had been planning a “Drag Happy Hour” at Mojo’s Lounge & Bar in Woodland, Calif., when an alleged Proud Boys group arrived and began threatening violence, organizers and authorities said.
“People were here, upset about the bar having their Pride event,” Woodland Police Department Deputy Chief Anthony Cucchi told KCRA3. “We tried to intervene as quickly as we could. It was a pretty chaotic scene.”
The the far-right group ultimately left on its own and no arrests were made, according to the station.
Organizers later opted to reschedule the event to a new date that has not been set yet.
The event was co-organized by Mojo’s Lounge & Bar and Elevate Queer Yolo, a program offered by a regional community health clinic aimed at supporting queer young adults.
The drag show had been advertised as “Woodland’s first Drag night” and urged young people to “come be proud, loud and full of joy with your local LGBTQIA+ community!” according to an event flyer. Woodland, a small city located about 15 miles north east of Sacramento, is known for its rural, country atmosphere.
After hearing that an alleged Proud Boys group in the area had been alerted about the event, organizers initially planned to go on with the show with additional security on site.
As attendees arrived for a more “low key” gathering, a group of agitators appeared and began hurling threats and homophobic slurs, said Dr. Melissa Marshall, CEO of CommuniCare Health Centers, the health clinic that co-organized the event.
“This hate group tried to storm into the bar,” she said. “At some point pepper spray was deployed.”
She said that some of the drag performers may have been assaulted but that no one opted to press charges.
“We believe these individuals were not from Woodland; the community was incredibly supportive,” she said.
The event had circulated on the hate Twitter page Libs of TikTok, receiving over 600 retweets and 1,800 likes on the page.
The incident occurred weeks after far-right extremists disrupted a Drag Queen Story Hour event in the Bay Area. The event, which was held at a library south of Oakland, was canceled after a group of five men described as members of the Proud Boys marched into the library shouting slurs.