Thousands of Crickets Disrupt Anti-Trans Conference & the Long History of Buggy Activism

Photo by Ivan Ivanovič on Unsplash

On Friday, October 11, 2024, members from the UK Trans Kids Deserve Better group went to a conference hosted by the anti-trans LGB Alliance. The activists ensured that a speech by noted anti-trans activist Jamie Reed was literally met with crickets. They released thousands of crickets they were carrying on them, disrupting the conference’s speeches for the rest of the day.

The protestors were then escorted off the premises, and the LGB Alliance’s plans were not only disrupted (momentarily) but also mocked and decried in the press. “…An anti-trans “advocacy” group known as LGB Alliance reportedly had its annual conference interrupted by thousands of unexpected guests,” mocks the outlet Them. “On Friday, a group of youth activists released over 6,000 crickets,” notes Mira Lazine in LGBTQ Nation.

I wanted to highlight this and other recent buggy activism, first and foremost, because I think it’s pretty funny. There is a certain catharsis that comes with seeing hateful people, who often go about their lives facing no consequences, having to run away from insects.

Yet, I also want to focus on this event because it is a long-standing tactic that has recently picked up steam.

Crickets and other bugs

There is a rich tradition of activists using insects to mock awful people. Earlier this year, pro-Palestinian activists released bugs, such as maggots, mealworms, and crickets, on the conference room table of the Watergate Hotel, where then-Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was set to stay during his July visit to Washington, DC.

Several years ago, protestors released hundreds of Madagascar hissing cockroaches in an Albany courtroom to disrupt an arraignment hearing of tenant rights activists.

Nearly a decade ago, in 2016, Byron Burger allegedly used staffing meetings to assist in immigration sting operations. As a result, dozens of employees were deported. In protest of these deportations, activists released over ten thousand insects at one of Byron Burger’s locations.

We can go back all the way to the organizing of Black militants during the 1960s. The Albany-based group “The Brothers” once used cockroaches as a vital aspect of its campaign to protest the city’s slumlords. They dumped them on the stage of then-Mayor Erastus Corning as part of a pressure campaign for better conditions.

Bugs show up again and again in the activist scene.

This tactic has been used so often because, one, it’s cheap. Bugs are everywhere and technically free. The Brothers found cockroaches from apartment buildings and collected them in jars. Today, you don’t even have to do that type of grunt work. You can buy creepy crawlers like crickets, cockroaches, mealworms, and more on sites such as Amazon.

Bugs are also easy to transport. In that earlier example, the Albany tenant-rights protestors ferried the Madagascar hissing cockroaches in Tupperware containers with lettuce. The Trans Kids Deserve Better activists had them on their person at a conference, and I can verify when combing through the products on Amazon, that these insects arrive in small to medium-sized packaging.

It is a low-cost, low-effort action made even easier by the Internet.

Finally, releasing insects makes a statement. People in the US generally hate bugs, and they have all sorts of negative connotations, some of which tie directly into the activism these organizers are doing. The Brother’s militants in Albany collected cockroaches from rundown apartment buildings, turning them into a rather direct statement on the slums this group was protesting.

A buggy conclusion

When Trans Kids Deserve Better activists disrupted Jamie Reed’s anti-trans speech earlier this month, they were part of a long history of activists using insects to fight for social justice. Sometimes, these critters are used to protest the inhumane environments people are living in. Other times, as with this instance, they were used to mock an unjust proceeding or event.

With bugs so easy to buy online, it’s an action that is becoming increasingly easier to do. A 1000 crickets is less than $30 on the Internet right now, and with that comes one helluva a temptation.