On This Day...

From the 2019 NYC Pride Parade

In 1969 an uprising took place that shook the world... even till today we are seeing the repercussions.

The day we stood up and said; enough is enough! We did it before but it was buried away inside the newspapers. We did it at the Black Cat Tavern, we did it at Compton's, and we did it at Dewey's but they never gained traction like Stonewall.

One of the best narrative for that night I think was written by Leslie Feinberg in an article in Worker's World, 'I'm glad I was in the Stonewall riot' in July 2011,

Sylvia Rivera and African American drag queen Marsha P. Johnson co-founded STAR: Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries in New York City in 1970. In this interview, which is included in Feinberg's upcoming non-fiction book "Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue" (Beacon, Oct. 1998), Rivera describes memories of life on the streets of New York as a drag queen, the uprising in Greenwich Village, and the era that followed:

[...]

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.

Okay notice how he ze describes the encounter,,,

It was street gay people from the Village out front-homeless people who lived in the park in

Sheridan Square outside the bar-and then drag queens behind them and everybody behind us. The Stonewall Inn telephone lines were cut and they were left in the dark.

"Street gay people" well there were a lot of trans and lesbians also in that uprising! When you call them out on it they well we are all under the "Gay" umbrella. Um... did you ask if the trans lesbian communities about this?

That is how we get written out of history. When you put us under one big umbrella the minorities lose their identities.

One last thing, Trump & Company wrote us out of history! Executive Order 14168, issued by Donald Trump on January 20, 2025 was what lead to our removal.

 

A little about Leslie Feinberg, ze was a socialist and one of the editors of Worker's World