Paeyonce

Today is the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a riot against discrimination and police violence led by Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people which lasted three days and would give the impetus for the Pride marches we still know today. On June 28th 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn — a gay bar in New York and one of the few places where LGBTQ+ people could safely gather at the time. Police locked all the exits, collected the IDs, and performed genital checks to arrest all those who were not dressed according to gender norms. Several patrons defied police orders, however, causing the police to carry out violent arrests, while those who were spared formed a crowd outside the inn. What followed isn’t precisely clear as there are many accounts of the evening, but to some eyewitnesses, Black gay civil rights icon Stormé DeLarverie was arrested and punched by the police, which triggered the riots as she called to the crowd, “Why don’t you guys do something?” People started fighting back. Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and Stormé DeLarverie were at the forefront of this fightback. Stonewall changed everything in terms of the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Before, the gay rights movement was focused on integration. The goal had been to prove to cisgender and heterosexual people that LGBTQ+ people weren’t a threat. After Stonewall, LGBTQ+ activists rallied behind the cause of “Gay liberation” instead of merely “integration.” The riots also paved the way for organized action, leading to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front, which championed and demanded the right of LGBTQ+ people to express themselves fully without fear but also fought against other forms of oppression, like racism, supporting, for instance, the Black Panther Party. While Pride Month is celebrated every June to memorialize the Stonewall Riots, recent efforts have sought to conceal the fact that it was a riot, downplaying its revolutionary roots. Despite Pride’s commercialized image today, Stonewall threw respectability politics out of the window and represented revolutionary anti-oppression politics.