Pattie Gonia

And for me, drag has been a really powerful form of protest art to tie back to my queer roots because during the AIDS crisis, when no one wanted to join our fight for queer liberation, when people were afraid to breathe the same air as us,

Trans people and drag performers turned fear into hope through creating what we now know as pride, this thing we celebrate year after year.

So through celebration and through strategic joy and through solution maxing, we were able to come to the table and bring something new, and it changed the course of queer rights for forever.

And I want that same thing in every social justice movement.

And I really think that that's the role that art, whether it's drag or music, has played throughout every single social justice movement, climate justice movement.

Think about the power of a song like We Shall Overcome during the civil rights movement and how much that banded people together.

Let me be clear.

Fascists hate joy.

So bring some fucking joy to the table.

I'm like, babe, this party sucks.

Like, who would want to join this party?

Seriously.

On the left, people might call it climate.

On the right, people might call it conservation.

It is the same thing, babe.

We have the potential via nature to actually, I think, bridge what people view as the unbridgeable right now.

Defined common ground, one might say.

Defined common ground.

And I think that's going to be hard, but I think it starts in realizing that everyone has a piece of nature that is really important to them, whether it's a local park, a national park, where they go to hunt, where they go to spend time with their community, where they go with their friends to paint their fingernails and all of that.

is equally important.