Happy LGBT History Month from WRA’s GSA! In honor of this month, GSA held a meeting about the Stonewall riots that began on June 28, 1969. We have already posted a blog about the oppressions faced by gay people before the riots, so this post will focus instead on the riots themselves.
For most of our information, we watched the documentary Stonewall Uprising, a great resource that explains the situation through interviews with historians and writers, and oral histories from gay people who were at the Stonewall Inn the night of the riots. Click the link if you’d like to check it out--the DVD is also in the Ong Library, if you’d like to watch it on a bigger screen!
The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar located on Christoper Street in New York City, smack in the middle of where the gay community tended to congregate at the time. It attracted people from all walks of gay life--people in business, academia, as well as middle-class people, but it was most popular with the young, homeless crowd and with many drag queens; it was described as a “refuge” by a man in the documentary. Because one homosexual on the premises classified an establishment as “disorderly”, the New York State Liquor Authority would revoke or deny a liquor license to a bar that served gay people. Seeing an opportunity to make money, the Mafia bought up the Stonewall among other bars and sold incredibly cheap, watered-down beer that was often stolen. Although they often paid off police, raids were still frequent, and in fact, the Stonewall Inn had been raided earlier that week.
Due to the upcoming mayoral elections, there was a police crackdown on gay bars, and during peak hours on the evening of June 28, 1969, police arrived with paddy wagons to make their usual arrests of those found to be in violation of any number of laws that discriminated against gay people and the gender-variant. But as they began to handcuff people and take them out to the paddy wagons, a crowd began to gather around the Stonewall, and many of those arrested were not going quietly. People began to throw pennies at the police, calling them coppers. Sensing the tense mood, the police retreated back inside the Stonewall, along with a reporter from The Village Voice, the newspaper that had its offices just up the street. The crowd began to get more and more violent; in some cases, incendiary devices were reported as being thrown, and at least one group of drag queens wrestled a parking meter from the ground and used it as a battering ram while the police frantically tried to call for backup. When that backup finally arrived, the crowd was briefly driven back but soon pushed forward again. Violent behavior increased, but the riots also took a different form: several people recall a group of drag queens singing songs while doing a kick-line in front of the police.
The riots continued for several days afterwards, with people from all sorts of backgrounds joining in; although they had begun with the drag queens and the poor street kids, representatives from almost every walk of life showed up to show their support. Out of this coming-together arose the gay rights movement; a year later, they would reunite to hold the first Pride Parade, which made its way from Christopher Street to Central Park despite bomb threats and other fears of violence. The event was so momentous around the world that in Germany, gay pride events are referred to as Christopher Street Day. For the first time, gay people from all walks of life stood together against the oppression that had kept them quite for so long.
~
Next week we’ll be talking about privilege and how it affects all of our lives! What do you think about the Stonewall uprising? Do you have any suggestions about meeting ideas? Email us at gsa.wra@gmail.com! Also keep your eyes peeled for information about an upcoming workshop we have in honor of Ally Week! Good luck with the week before midfall break!
No comments:
Post a Comment