WorldPride Washington DC strikes a protest note on Donald Trump's doorstep
"Sometimes it feels like a lot," she tells the crowd at the 'Drag is Not a Crime' event, part of the WorldPride festival.
"Every day you wake up and your own government is trying to shut you the f--- down and tell you that you're not a person.
"WorldPride being in DC could not have come at a better time. Now it's our time to fight."
Washington DC was chosen as host city for the biennial festival — a cluster of LGBT+ parties, conferences and parades — well before last year's re-election of Donald Trump. But his presence in the White House has sent a strong fight-the-government theme running through all its events.
On day one of his presidency, Mr Trump ordered government agencies to start recognising only two unchangeable sexes, including on official documents like visas and passports.
Subsequent orders have sought to ban trans people from the military, block funds for gender-affirming care for people under 19, and shut down diversity and inclusion programs across all arms of government.
Many Republican states have taken the policies further.
The president even effectively installed himself as the chair of Washington's Kennedy Centre, known as the nation's premier performing arts venue, and declared an end to drag performances "targeting our youth".
The political backdrop has generated a very different vibe to the previous WorldPride event in Sydney in 2023, which the Australian government used to announce millions of dollars in funding for LGBT+ organisations.
"It couldn't be a starker contrast," said Monash University human rights law professor Paula Gerber, who attended both events.
"Sydney was a celebration. We were really rejoicing in how far we'd come with human rights protection
"Here, there's no celebration. This is a call to action. This is realisation of how quickly our rights can be wound back."
The political environment has also discouraged corporate sponsors from continuing to back pride events in the US. Several big ones have pulled out of WorldPride this year, and others have asked for their logos to be removed from signage.
The Marriott Hotel group asked for banners to be changed so they no longer said "presented by Marriott", according to a report in the Washington Post.
But the Marriott has continued to host the festival's human rights conference, just 500 metres from the White House, with keynote speeches and panels examining the state of play for LGBT rights around the world.
The administration said it was defending women's rights and protecting "freedom of conscience" with its changes to transgender policy.
"Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being," the White House order said.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt this week said there were "no plans" for it to recognise Pride Month. Illinois Republican Mary Miller introduced a resolution to Congress to instead recognise June as "Family Month" to "reject the lie of 'Pride' and instead honour God's timeless and perfect design".
Some speakers at WorldPride voiced fears the political rhetoric around LGBT rights was spurring hate crimes against the community.
Media advocacy group GLAAD said it had tracked more than 900 anti-LGBTQ incidents in the US between May last year and March this year, and said many more incidents have likely gone unreported. They included violent attacks resulting in 84 injuries and 10 deaths.
"For so many of us in this time right now, there's this very real sense of fear," GLAAD's senior manager of news and research, Sarah Moore, said.
"This sense of distress, this sense of worry, is really heightened right now around Pride with that attention on our community."
The three-week festival is wrapping up this weekend with a street parade, a party on the National Mall and a two-day music festival headlined by Melbourne pop star Troye Sivan and US singer Jennifer Lopez.
Attendance numbers are not yet available, but hotel bookings for the opening and closing weekends were down compared to the same time last year. The city had initially expected 3 million people to visit for WorldPride, but organisers later halved that estimate.
"We anticipated bookings to be much higher at this time for WorldPride and do know that the climate, the concern for folks internationally to travel to the United States is real," Ryan Bos, the executive director of organising body Capital Pride Alliance, told NPR.
Professor Gerber told conference attendees they should consider "boomerang advocacy" to keep up the fight for rights in the US. That is where local human rights advocates harness overseas groups and global institutions to increase pressure on repressive regimes.
"It's a strategy that's used when the government in a country is too hostile for local LGBTI activists to safely advocate for reform," she told the ABC.
"I never in a million years thought that I'd be coming to America to talk to Americans about using boomerang advocacy."
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