Saturday Is The Start Of Pride Month And Is Also…

When the statues to Ms. Rivera and Ms. Johnson will be announced.

Two Transgender Activists Are Getting a Monument in New York
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both key figures in the gay liberation movement, will be honored with a permanent installation in Greenwich Village.
The New York Times
By Julia Jacobs
May 29, 2019

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, pioneering transgender activists who were at the vanguard of the gay rights movement, will be immortalized in a monument that may be placed down the street from the Stonewall Inn, the city said on Wednesday.

Ms. Johnson and Ms. Rivera were both drag performers and vibrant characters in Greenwich Village street life who worked on behalf of homeless L.G.B.T.Q. youth and those affected by H.I.V./AIDS. They are also believed to have been key figures in the June 1969 Stonewall Uprising who fought police as they raided the gay bar on Christopher Street.

The planned monument will be publicly announced on Thursday in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the uprising, which was a seminal moment for gay rights. It is also part of the city’s effort to fix a glaring gender gap in public art. Statues of L.G.B.T.Q. individuals are virtually nonexistent among the city’s monuments, and the city says the dedication to Johnson and Rivera will be one of the world’s first for transgender people.
[…]
The monument is estimated to cost about $750,000, a spokeswoman for the city said, and officials will begin searching for an artist shortly. Officials hope it will be completed by the end of 2021. Its exact location will be finalized after discussions with the community.

Who would have thought all those years ago that there would be statues to trans people honoring their achievements for our rights.

The article also said,

Even within the community of gay rights activists, Ms. Johnson and Ms. Rivera were often sidelined. Ms. Rivera often quarreled with gay political leaders who excluded transgender rights from their priorities, memorably warning, “Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned.”

Even today we still have to fight with some of “our gay brothers and our gay sisters” for our rights. 

We have been written out of Stonewall so many times in movies, in magazine articles, and in books that we have to be forever vigilant. How many times have to heard it was the beginning of the “Gay Rights” movement when in reality the Stonewall Uprising was the beginning of the LGBTQ+ movement.

Right in the heart of the uprising was Ms. Johnson and Ms. Rivera, no one know for sure who started the rebellion but one thing is certain is that there were lesbians and trans people right in the heart of the it.

Sylvia Rivera in an interview with Leslie Feinberg in 1998 in the magazine Workers World said,

In 1969, the night of the Stonewall riot, was a very hot, muggy night. We were in the Stonewall [bar] and the lights came on. We all stopped dancing. The police came in.

They had gotten their payoff earlier in the week. But Inspector Pine came in-him and his morals squad-to spend more of the government's money.

We were led out of the bar and they cattled us all up against the police vans. The cops pushed us up against the grates and the fences. People started throwing pennies, nickels, and quarters at the cops.

And then the bottles started. And then we finally had the morals squad barricaded in the Stonewall building, because they were actually afraid of us at that time. They didn't know we were going to react that way.

We were not taking any more of this shit. We had done so much for other movements. It was time.
[…]
I'm glad I was in the Stonewall riot. I remember when someone threw a Molotov cocktail, I thought: "My god, the revolution is here. The revolution is finally here!"

In another article this time by Jessi Gan “Still at the back of the bus”: Sylvia Rivera’s struggle she quotes Rivera… “characterizes the Stonewall Inn as ‘a white male bar for middle-class males to pick up young boys of different races.’”

We must be always watchful that we are not written out of history.