So ladies, what is your first memory hearing about Stonewall?
When was the first time?
It took me a while to hear any details about it, it just was sort of mentioned as a word,
for times, like the beginning of pride was with Stonewall,
I think I knew it was in New York, maybe thought it was a wall at first.
Literal no details.
It wasn't until I came to New York and started working in nightlife
and went to the Stonewall bar that I kind of put two and two together.
It wasn't until I started to kind of connect activism and my drag to the community
that I realised that this would be a kind of continuation of a legacy that had started at Stonewall.
Well, even though …
Tell us mama, tell us!
I remember hearing about Stonewall certainly since I came to New York, you know,
the details are fuzzy and they still argue bitterly over them today
because it was a free-for-all, it was an uprising, it was a riot,
they were being attacked by the police,
they rose up and threw beer bottles and that was the beginning of gay rights.
Wearing clothes like this was literally against the law then and it's clear that
the biggest target of the police violence was against people dressed like us.
People in drag would have been rounded up, carted out of the Stonewall
into paddy wagons and taken to the jail that still sits there and this really is a
case of people just being fed up of being arrested once a week for
expressing ourselves, and our pain and our glory, the way that we love to.
As the gay movement grew based on the loudmouth effort of the drag queens,
you know, who didn't have maybe a lot to lose.
They took those steps and then the gay community once it kind of organised behind that,
the more conservative members of the gay community, kind of …
they weren't interested in seeing Sylvia Rivera, who was a homeless trans person,
you know, Marsha P Johnson, a streetwalker.
It's not lost on me that, you know, I may have been in a similar situation,
being overly fearful of my life or my safety, or my health,
from the police back then, as I still am today.
And folks like me.
Is that coming mainly from being black or trans?
It's honestly both, I can't separate them but it's honestly both.
Try!
I think it's honestly both because as a black person just ever since I can remember,
there was an innate fear of the police.
It is interesting that these are the people that were at the frontlines who are kind of
continuously overlooked.
50 years later, 50th anniversary of Stonewall,
how far have we come?
Light years and almost nothing at the same time.
There's a sense of complacency.
I think, we have a different definition of activism now than we did
back 50 years ago,
and I think for some people that it certainly doesn't seem as life or death,
but then only a couple years ago, I had the opportunity to go march in the Pride parade in Latvia.
The people in the side of the street were screaming at us because they were not supporting
and they were throwing eggs and stones,
these people were literally marching as if they were marching for their lives,
it was handmade signs and let's just walk,
there were no floats, no vehicles and the police were there to stop a riot.
Well, we've become complacent for a variety of reasons,
Aids is no longer a death sentence, Aids brought the community together,
and we fought a common enemy …
The lesbians came and fought it with us, even though they weren't so much at risk …
You know, it did bring us together, trans, whatever kind of people.
I think that we pretty much feel that we have our rights,
that we live in a big city, in the big city bubble …
Actually, if we were to get in this look and march down the street at midnight on Staten Island,
I bet you we would get out of that bubble real quick.
You ask about like, what are we fighting for?
It is certain legislation and it is the right to not be discriminated at work
or healthcare or housing … I think honestly the future is all of us
having a more developed and nuanced perspective and openness to anything gender nonconforming,
people who are in their own expression non-binary.
The other thing I think is the most important that we're sometimes tiptoeing around:
the Bible is used as a weapon that they've used against me and my kind throughout my life,
whereas our allies, that are also Christian,
they say, 'no, no, no, I don't know what you think you are, honey,
but God is love, you ain't it'.
This discussion has been so on point and so political,
and I think that is what this is all about at the end of the day, you know
we can disagree about what the next step is but to not be talking
about it at all is the biggest crime and I feel like sometimes we fall into that trap.
I hope that there will be more discussions like this,
that's, I guess, my ending wish.
We got to keep fighting and yelling at each other.