Remixed and Refreshed

Willie Redman is used to being the life of the party as drag queen DeJa Skye. Redman competed twice on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” in 2021 and 2025. Redman’s appearance on the show was most memorable for his spirited, glammed-up impersonation of Lil Jon in the show’s “Match Game” spoof, “Snatch Game.” But while visiting Portland last summer during  Pride, Redman discovered a love of deejaying. 

“One of my promoter friends asked if I’d ever thought about deejaying, and I’ve thought about it but hadn’t gotten into it, and he said I’d be great at it,” Redman said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m a creature of habit, so a little bit of peer pressure kind of works. I’m not going to do it on my own, for the most part, unless I’m fully, fully invested in it. But hearing a little bit of ‘You’d be great,’ makes me go, ‘You know what?’”

Redman hails from the Fresno area, and loves bringing DeJa Skye to Portland. Skye performed at last year’s Portland Pride Festival, and returns on July 18 and 19 as a headlining entertainer alongside fellow drag superstars Lushious Massacr and Tenderoni. Skye will play a DJ set to hype up the crowd at Portland Pride in a full-circle moment celebrating her first DJ anniversary. Redman walked incognito through last year’s festival and was charmed by what he saw. Expecting President Donald Trump’s loyalists to disrupt the festival, Redman was relieved by how much fun he had. 

“The weather is amazing, let me just put that out there. The middle of July is sickening when it’s overcast,” Redman said. “Seeing the amount of openness was really great. I definitely think, specifically in the drag world, we’re closed off a lot. With ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ there’s very much one kind of drag, one kind of entertainer, or there’s drag that’s ‘respected,’ but then you go to Portland and see a lot of misfits, a lot of different types of drag artists, a different representation that’s very exciting. You see boy drag, you see AFAB (assigned female at birth), you see androgynous, you see a little bit dark. So it was just eye-opening and amazing.”

Pride holds a special place in Redman’s heart. He takes headlining responsibilities very seriously. He remembers attending a Pride festival as a closeted teen, which inspired Redman to come out later in life. 

“I felt so wide-eyed, almost like ‘Oh, this is a community I could definitely be a part of,’” Redman said. “Being able to actually share that story and travel the world for Pride means the world because it really does mean — as much as people are trying to erase us, and as much as people are trying to act like we don’t exist — we have to continue to celebrate. Pride Month might be the month of June, but you have to be prideful 24/7/365.”

As an open format DJ, DeJa Skye loves mixing pop, dance, rock and rap tracks to keep the dance floor hot. She also plays remixes by other DJs as she works on making her own, and uses some beatmatching software. More established DJs might clutch their pearls at this practice, but Skye sees herself as part of a more open generation of DJs taking advantage of new tools at their disposal.

“My main goal is just party, my main goal is just high energy and up,” Redman says. “Just being enthralled with the community and feeling the love with the community, I want to give that back now.”

Made with Pride

Unlike most celebrations across the country that take place in June, to commemorate the June 28, 1969 Stonewall riot that kicked off a new era of queer activism, Portland schedules its Pride Festival in late July. That’s primarily to avoid overlap with other cultural events, like Juneteenth, Portland Rose Festival, Father’s Day and the Delta Park Powwow. From 1976 to 2023, Portland Pride coincided with these events, forcing Queer Black folks and Queer Indigenous people to choose between important cultural celebrations.

Ian Morton has been director of programs for Pride Northwest since June of 2023.

“It’s been amazing,” Morton said. “As a person who is both Black and queer, I’m excited that I can celebrate Juneteenth, and fully dive into that, and then also do Pride.”

Portland Pride now no longer coincides with the Delta Park Powwow, an annual celebration of Native American cultures, communities and traditions. 

“As the adoptive father of an Indigenous child, knowing that I also have the opportunity to take her to the Delta Powwow is equally important,” Morton said. “Being able to keep her connected to that piece of her cultural heritage is really important.” 

This year, Portland Pride’s theme is “Made With Pride.” It aims to celebrate queer vendors, makers, restaurant owners and others who work to infuse joy and meaning into everyday life. 

“We are celebrating those who put their efforts into creating this queer utopia that we love,” Morton said.

As a haven for LGBTQIA2S+ people, Portland has not experienced the same fallout that many other pride organizations across the country have. Corporations have shrunk their ties with diversity causes and LGBTQIA2S+ events in response to the Trump administration’s attacks on Diversity Equity & Inclusion policies. 

Tampa Pride announced a one-year hiatus after a bill passed earlier this year authorized Gov. Ron Desantis to forcibly remove any elected official who supports Pride organizations in the state. Ashtabula Pride in Northwestern Ohio canceled its event due to reduced funding from sponsors and less participation by volunteers who feared retaliation. The city of Long Beach, California canceled its Pride festival at the last minute, citing permitting issues — a decision that has been met with widespread anger.  

“We’ve heard so many horror stories around so many organizations deciding not to support pride or not to sponsor pride,” Morton said. “We’ve been lucky.”

Celebrations are underway, but the Trump administration’s attacks on trans rights, DEI policies and federally-funded healthcare programs have created a pervasive sense of fear and uncertainty. This is the  first administration in U.S. history to refuse to recognize World AIDS Day. It eliminated nearly all LGBTQIA2S+ and HIV-focused content and resources from the White House website, banned transgender people from enrolling in the military, removed questions about sexual orientation and gender identity from hundreds of government forms, surveys and government-funded research projects, just to name a few of its many harmful actions. 

Morton said that’s a reminder of the power of celebration. 

“I came out in the 1990s, during the HIV/AIDS crisis,” Morton said. “Everything felt very high stakes, but it also gave a different kind of value to authenticity, to being who you are, to being willing to walk down the street holding hands with the person that you love, if they happen to be of the same gender. We’re getting reminded of how important it is for us to show up.”

Find more information about Portland Pride festivities at portlandpride.org.

This article appears in June 24, 2026.