Rep. Robert Garcia & ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Winner Sasha Colby Talk Activism at D.C. Event

The most recent contestant to win RuPaul’s Drag Race, Sasha Colby, stopped in Washington, D.C., for her first appearance since winning the competition show.

Colby performed at Pitchers, a popular gay bar in the Adams Morgan section of the capital city, to throngs of excited fans.

Among them was the first gay immigrant elected to Congress, California Rep. Robert Garcia.

Garcia, who has not been shy about his fandom for all things Drag Race, tells The Advocate that he was a Colby fan from day one.

“I’ve been rooting for her from episode one,” Garcia says. “I was pretty active telling folks on Twitter to support team Sasha Colby, so I’m really glad she won.”

He notes that “a lot of amazing queens this season” were featured on the show.

“Sasha Colby is an icon in the community,” he says. “She’s done so much, particularly for trans people and trans rights, and I’m just grateful to have met her.”

Garcia says that he had just come to support her D.C. performance but that the two ended up having a lengthy and meaningful conversation.

“We talked about trans rights [and] I thanked her for being vocal in supporting the [LGBTQ+] community and about her work with the ACLU Drag Defense Fund, which she’s active in,” he says. “I [also] thanked her for her openness and for inspiring so many in our community.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race, MTV, and World of Wonder, the show’s production company, all support the American Civil Liberties Union’s Drag Defense Fund, which helps sustain the ACLU’s LGBTQ+ rights work.

Drag queens and trans people have always led the civil rights movement within gay spaces, he says, and many people don’t know about their impact on the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

“Whether it was Stonewall or whether it was the early Pride marches, whether it’s raising money during the AIDS crisis, it was always drag queens and trans people leading those efforts. That’s something that should never be forgotten,” Garcia says.

Speaking with The Advocate on Thursday morning, he notes that, especially on a day when Republicans in the U.S. House passed a bill banning transgender athletes from sports, voices like Colby’s must be uplifted.

“This [Republican bill] is nothing more than bullying young kids and bullying trans youth and families,” Garcia says. “It is attacking a very small part of our population. You are more likely to get gunned down and shot as a young child than you are to compete in a sport with a trans kid. We’re focused all of our energy on this issue while kids are dying every week in schools and our communities of gun violence, and I think it’s really shameful what the House Republicans are doing.”

The bill passed on Thursday prevents individuals who were assigned male at birth from participating in female sports teams at K-12 schools and universities. The bill is certain to go nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate.

Supporting vulnerable communities must be stepped up, Garcia says, because the far right is attempting to exclude, discriminate against, and attack trans, non-binary, and queer people. He says Colby’s voice and advocacy exemplify why people fight back and speak out.

“To be able to talk to Sasha about those issues and then vote against that horrific, shameful bill strengthens my resolve to support and continue to uplift our community and our trans community here in Congress,” Garcia says.

Check out photos and videos from Sasha Colby’s performance at Pitchers in D.C. below.

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