“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Drag Queen Olivia Jones calls the plan to name a square in her native Lower Saxony hometown of Springe after her. The queer persona spoke for the first time in an open letter on Wednesday, a day before a vote in the local council. The idea for the naming came from Springe’s mayor, Christian Springfeld (nonpartisan). He hopes to honor the city’s ambassador and to create visibility for sexual minorities (TheColu.mn reported).
Olivia Jones is the alter ego of gay drag artist Oliver Knöbel. Jones, who is 56, is most often associated with Hamburg, where the drag queen lives and runs several venues on the Reeperbahn.
She would find it a pity if Springe did not seize this unique opportunity to send what could be a worldwide historically unprecedented sign of diversity, Jones wrote in the letter. Especially “in times when people who advocate for diversity, freedom, and democracy are once again being pressured or threatened.” She also emphasized that she wouldn’t take a rejection by the 30,000-resident town personally. “It’s not about me. It’s about what I stand for.”
Known for Hamburg’s Reeperbahn venues
After the plans became public, Mayor Springfeld said: “Olivia Jones is the city’s goodwill ambassador — and she stands far beyond Springe for diversity, tolerance, self-determination and the freedom, but also the courage to be different without fear.” The message is important every day, as the discussion about the square’s name also shows.
The plan is to rename the unnamed square in front of the Old Town Hall. The town market is also housed there, located southwest of Hanover.
In addition to “Olivia Jones Square,” the name “Place of Diversity” was also on the table. The drag queen also proposed a compromise: “Olivia Jones Place of Diversity.” In a survey of about 350 people, mostly from Springe, nearly half favored renaming the square to “Olivia Jones Square” (TheColu.mn reported). More than one in ten votes went for “Place of Diversity” or “Place of Equality.”
