Hello Readers,
Today marks a very important day for the LGBT community,
50 years ago today the Stonewall riots started. The Stonewall riots were a
series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community
against a police raid that began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, at the
Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village, New York City.
At the time, bars such as the Mafia-run gay bar The
Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York, were the only safe spaces where
queer people could come together and form their own community. To get around
state regulations that prohibited gay people from being served alcohol, mafioso
"Fat Tony" Lauria operated the Stonewall Inn as a private club,
taking its name from the previous bar-restaurant so he wouldn't have to change
the sign. Management typically bribed the police to tip them off in advance
however that night there was no tip-off.
On June 28, 1969, a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn,
a gay club in downtown Manhattan. Police had been known to raid the club from
time to time, but on that night, the patrons fought back against police
discrimination and the police intended to arrest everyone in the club that
night because of their resistance. As they waited for support to arrive, a crowd
gathered outside the bar, trapping the police inside. Soon, patrol wagons
arrived to transport the patrons to prison.
According to LGBT legend, it was Marsha P Johnson who
threw the first Molotov cocktail at Stonewall, but it has long been debated if
it was actually her friend Sylvia Rivera. However, in interviews before her
death, Sylvia said “I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov
cocktail by many historians, but I always like to correct it. I threw the
second one. I did not throw the first one!”
A protest broke out, with police and community members
clashing through the night, and for the rest of the week. Night after night,
more and more protesters returned to Christopher Street, where Stonewall is
located, to protest the mistreatment and discrimination they suffered at the
hands of the police.
Weeks later, a "gay power" march from
Washington Square Park to Stonewall that drew hundreds of people. On June 28,
1970, thousands of people returned to Greenwich Village for the first Christoper
Street Liberation Day march. It became an annual event and evolved into the
Pride parade, which is marked every year in New York and other cities across
the world. As you can see originally, Pride was a political demonstration to
voice LGBT demands for equal rights and protections. It wasn’t until 1991 that
Pride began to resemble what it is today: a celebration of queer life and
sexuality in addition to a political and social demonstration.
Last year at London Pride the lesbian and feminist group
Get The L Out. The group argues the trans movement is attacking lesbian rights
and said it protested to protect those rights. You do know you have Pride
because of two transgender women right… A transgender woman and a transgender
woman of colour started The Stonewall Riots causing the protests that
eventually turned into the parades you know today.
L x
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