How it all beg an...

On behalf of the organizing committee we would like to
welcome all of you to the 2005 DYKE March - Los Angeles.
We are making history, and you are contributing to another
chapter in Los Angeles’ long and rich history of queer activism,
and to our universal struggle for freedom, equality and human rights.
 
 Dyke Marches apparently began in the LA in the mid-seventies, or so it’s rumoured. 
It wasn’t until recently that we started to make this event an annual tradition.
 
In 1991, during Lesbian Visibility Week, approximately 100 loud queer women
met at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and San Vicente, and marched east up the
grassy median.  The next year, in the summer of 1992, women in Los Angeles,
San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle and other cities began talking about
organizing a huge DYKE March on the eve of the 1993 National March on Washington,
a march where we could show the world that the queer community includes thousands of out
and proud queer women.  By fall of 1993, the March became the primary project of
National ACT UP-Women’s Caucus and by mid-February of 1993, the
New York Lesbian Avengers joined the national organizing network. This project
culminated in the largest DYKE March in U.S. history, numbers estimated at
between 40,000 and 100,000 queer women taking the streets of Washington DC.  

It is this tradition that we have organized
our DYKE March since 1994, and we will continue to march.  
Our last march in West Hollywood (Boys Town) was in 2002,
within a predominantly Homo Men's community. 
We felt that we were blending in with too many general
gay and lesbian activities in West Hollywood. 

We wanted more Lesbian Visibility, in the tradition of the many
LA Dyke Women marching before us. We took the challenge, and in 2003,
we walked away from the homogenous (!) activities of WeHo and went east to
Silver Lake, a.k.a. Girlztown,
for our very own DYKE MARCH LOS ANGELES!
 
Thanks to many groups, organizations and businesses that have
supported the DYKE March - Los Angeles, including Dungeon Designs, our
full and only major financial sponsor, The Maser Lesbian Archive,
Radical Women, and Women-Motocyclists.
 
Remember that the future of young queer women will look to the activism
of today’s gay women for inspiration, because a few of us are willing
to get out, once a year, and march in the streets of Los Angeles.
 
Our DYKE MARCH will be held on Saturday June 9, 2007. 
We meet on Sunset Blvd./Sunset Dr., between The Vista Theater and Uncle Jers
 
So share and promote the DYKE March - Los Angeles, write about it,
 email your friends about it, do whatever it takes to make it known
that gay women are sending a message that we will always fight for
freedom and respect, and the rights for all women.
 

Support your DYKE March - Los Angeles
and DYKE Marches everywhere!