Sylvia Rivera 1951–2002 and Marsha P Johnson 1945-1992
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson were trans women of colour who in 1970 set up STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. STAR was set up shortly after the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a series of protests around the Stonewall Inn Greenwich Village, New York city. Stonewall was a watershed moment for LGBT liberation. The Stonewall Inn was a bar where LGBT people could go and dance, credited as the only bar in New York at that time which welcomed LGBT people and where dancing was permitted. This made it a regular target for police raids where money and alcohol was seized and trans people were arrested. On 28 June 1969 a particularly vicious police raid took place, sparking resistance from the crowd inside and outside. Over 400 protestors fought pitched battles over several days against the brutal New York Police, forcing them to withdraw from several streets and demanding the legalisation of gay bars and for the right to display their sexualities and genders without fear of arrest. Marsha P Johnson was a prominent participant. The reason PRIDE events today are typically held in June reflects the early marches and protests commemorating Stonewall.
In 1970 Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were central to an occupation at New York University’s Weinstein Hall in protest at their cancellation of a gay dance. After five days, police forcibly removed the activists from the building, though a smaller protest continued outside. After the occupation, Rivera helped organize a rally against the police dispersal stating: ‘All we fought for at Weinstein Hall was lost when we left upon the request of the pigs – So now the question is, do we want Gay Power or Pig Power?’
As trans women and sex workers of colour Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson felt that the needs of homeless youth and trans youth were not being met by early LGBT groups so they set up STAR – Street Transvestite (later Transgender) Action Revolutionaries. As part of their activism they set up STAR House and supported homeless youth with practical needs like somewhere to sleep and food, but also supported with literacy and founding the first trans sex worker labour organisation. Rivera and STAR also became a part of the Young Lords Party – an organisation of revolutionary Puerto Rican youth – and supported the Black Panther Party.
The first STAR house was created in a parked caravan in a Greenwich Village carpark, functioning as a shelter and social space for trans sex workers and other LGBT street youth. However, the caravan was targeted by city hall and was towed away, prompting STAR to find a more permanent home on 213 Second Avenue. As almost all gay bars were run by the mafia in the 1970’s, STAR decided to fund themselves rather than be in the pockets of local crime families, paying the rent by doing street work.
Today PRIDE events have been co-opted by capitalism. The origins of PRIDE in the stonewall riots and the radical roots of pride protests have been airbrushed and replaced by businesses falling over themselves get a piece of the LGBT market. With even the police claiming they promote the rights of LGBT people whilst completely failing to address soaring levels of hate crime. For instance, between 2018-19 there were 13,530 reports of hate crime in Britain, nearly treble that of 2015, but prosecutions have more than halved to 8%. Today, in opposition to this co-option, we salute Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who considered themselves as radicals and revolutionaries all their lives, celebrating them as fierce women fighters on international women’s day and recognising their contribution to the fight against gender and sexuality oppression.
(https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/marsha-p-johnson-sylvia-rivera.htm, https://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-73/)
