Stonewall and Beyond: An Abbreviated History of Radical Queer Organizing
The 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village have become synonymous with the birth of the gay liberation movement in the United States. The Stonewall Inn was a mafia-owned and operated bar in New York City frequented by the city’s thriving queer and trans population. Like many other gay bars, Stonewall was frequently raided by police, and during these raids, drag queens and trans and gender non-conforming people would be singled out and harassed because of their gender presentation. On the night of June 27, 1969, following one such police raid and continued harassment, a group of patrons consisting of and led by Black and Latine trans street workers resisted arrest, threw bricks and glass bottles at police officers, and eventually forced them to barricade themselves inside the bar.
Contextualizing Stonewall within a larger movement
Stonewall was a reaction to the persistent state violence experienced by trans and gender non-conforming people, especially low-income QTBIPOC who exist at the intersection of many distinct forms of oppression that are amplified by the prison industrial complex (PIC). Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both trans BIPOC who participated in the riots and would go on to become outspoken advocates for queer liberation, experienced lifelong police violence because of their participation in sex work coupled with their race and gender presentation. They both lived in a near-constant state of poverty and experienced repeated incarceration; Johnson was arrested over 100 times over the course of her life. The importance of Stonewall as a singular embodiment of trans resistance against the necropolitical architectures of carcerality and police violence cannot be understated.
What’s often lost in contemporary discourse about the history of the queer liberation movement is that Stonewall was one event in a disjointed — but nonetheless continuous — movement for liberation from the oppressive structures of the state, PIC and capitalism, which all work syngeristically with social structures like racism and transphobia to deny trans people, especially trans femmes of color, their humanity. The documented history of trans organizing (including instances of violent resistance) in the United States precedes Stonewall by at least a decade; for as long as the state has existed, resistance to the state by trans people has existed as well. This resistance comes in the form of violence (riots), organized movements, mutual aid, and community solidarity; it’s ever-present and everlasting.
Stonewall wasn’t the first: On violence, organizing & trans resistance
There is no shortage of examples of violence being used as a tool for resistance across a multitude of resistance movements, even in movements where nonviolent organizing was the dominant resistance tactic. For example, colonial resistance against British imperial rule in India, often presented as a paragon of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha), was riddled with instances of armed uprisings. The neoliberal distinction between violence and nonviolence is predicated on an individualistic perception of violence. In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler argues for the adoption of a more socially focused understanding of violence and nonviolence as tools for the collective. Regardless of how much one agrees with Butler’s philosophical argument, it is clear that there is a persistent historical erasure of violence in resistance movements, and this holds true for trans resistance efforts.
Before delving into violent trans resistance pre-Stonewall, let’s get one thing clear: Stonewall was violent. Patrons verbally harassed police, threw bricks, glass, and other objects at them, and almost successfully burned down the bar while police were barricaded inside it. Following the riot, large media sources used “diminishing language” to minimize the scope and intensity of the riot. By contrast, queer media sources used the term “riot” to characterize the uprisings almost right away, intent on communicating the magnitude of the event and the power of trans resistance. Both the message and magnitude of Stonewall have been somewhat diluted by present-day depictions of the event. How else could people get away with presenting Stonewall as a watershed moment for the queer liberation movement whilst simultaneously decrying the use of violence as a tool for resistance and liberation? The narrative of Stonewall is presented independent of information about the PIC, capitalism, and state violence. This leads to the decontextualization of Stonewall within the larger movement.
A decade before Stonewall, there was Cooper Do-nuts, a cafe in the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles that was frequented by queer and trans people. Similar to New York City, the LAPD frequently targeted gay bars and restaurants and harassed patrons, especially drag queens, sex workers and trans and gender non-conforming people. In fact, Cooper Do-nuts was one of the only establishments that admitted trans people; other establishments were too worried about the LAPD’s sweeps. In 1950, under new leadership, the LAPD began arresting people more aggressively for homosexuality and “sex perversion.”
In May of 1959, two drag queens, two male sex workers, and a gay man were escorted out of Cooper Do-nuts by police. As they were being shoved into the back of a police car, one of the men began to utter verbal protests, which led to a crowd of onlookers rushing the streets and throwing coffee cups, donuts, plates and eating utensils at the cops. The five patrons successfully resisted arrest, but the crowd only grew in size, and a riot ensued. The uprising at Cooper Do-nuts is considered the first successful example of trans resistance against the police. Although it is unclear whether the rioters at Stonewall were inspired by the uprising in Los Angeles, there are many similarities between the two riots, the most prominent being that they were both led by low-income trans people fighting against state violence.
Seven years after Cooper Do-nuts, there was yet another riot led by trans people against the police. Gene Compton’s Cafeteria was a restaurant in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, which was frequented by queer and trans people, was also subjected to regular police raids that resulted in the harassment of trans and gender non-conforming patrons. On an unknown date in 1966, a trans woman, fed up with the repeated harassment, threw a cup of coffee in an officer’s face, sparking a historic riot which would culminate in gunfire. The drag queens at the head of the resistance efforts would later be called “The Screaming Queens of Compton.”
One thing we can take away from Cooper Do-Nuts and Compton is the idea of queer solidarity. At Cooper Do-Nuts, for example, the crowd that came to the aid of the five arrested patrons was composed of people of various sexualities and gender identities (as well as races and income levels); they fought for and with each other in hopes of achieving some sort of collective liberation.
Mutual aid, community solidarity & queerness
Mutual aid and community solidarity are perhaps the most important tools for collective liberation. Mutual aid is social solidarity in its most distilled form, and a fundamentally radical alternative to capitalist exploitation. The stratification of wealth and power under capitalism creates a top-down (vertical) flow of resources. Conversely, mutual aid establishes a multidirectional, horizontal flow of resources between community members. It de-emphasizes the importance of divisions (hierarchies) within a community, and encourages collective care and compassion.
Trans activist and writer Dean Spade elaborates on the concept of mutual aid and its necessity during times of crisis in Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). One thing Spade asserts in his book is that mutual aid is an important tool in movement building; it helps to empower people with marginalized identities and mobilize communities to act in solidarity and do the work necessary to achieve liberation. In many ways, mutual aid and community solidarity are forms of resistance in their own right. It enables communities to resist attempts at division by oppressive entities including the state, and the unique space this resistance creates makes way for immense progress. Cohousing, resource sharing and other forms of mutual aid and community solidarity are all vital lifelines for queer people, especially young queer people of color, who face social rejection, homelessness, and incarceration at unprecedented rates.
The Vanguard is one example of queer community solidarity in action. The organization was created in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District in 1965 by Adrian Ravarour, a Mormon priest and promoter of nonviolent resistance, to help transient queer and trans youth accept themselves and to teach them nonviolent organizing techniques. The nascent organization was given free organizing space in Glide Church by Cecil Williams. They would go on to demonstrate in front of businesses which were hostile to queer people, and organized a picket following the Compton Cafeteria Riot. One of their most notable actions, the Street Sweep, involved going out into the streets of San Francisco and cleaning up trash. The goal was to shift the public’s image of homeless youth, especially homeless queer and trans youth, and reclaim the narrative of otherness that was forced on them. The organization shuffled through leadership and eventually fell apart due to internal struggles in 1967, but its significance as the first youth movement for queer liberation outlasts its short lifespan. Not only did Vanguard give resources to queer youth who had been neglected by systems meant to protect them, but it also provided them with the tools to organize for their liberation.
On the opposite side of the country in New York City, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, the trans sex workers and revolutionaries of color who led the uprisings at Stonewall, created Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to address the unique needs of homeless queer and trans youth who were often neglected by the queer liberation movement. STAR was born after a sit-in at Weinstein Hall in NYU, where many queer organizations came together to protest the cancellation of a dance organized by a queer organization Although successful, Rivera and Johnson saw the pressing need to organize queer and trans young people. Together, they opened their first STAR house in a trailer in Greenwich Village. STAR houses were shelters for transient sex workers and queer and trans youth, and spaces for these groups to organize and spiritually liberate themselves. After finding a more permanent home for their STAR house, Rivera and Johnson continued to provide the queer youth population of NYC with shelter, teaching them how to read and write as well.
The common theme between Vanguard and STAR is their use of mutual aid and solidarity as a means to achieve liberation. From conception to execution, both of these organizations operated using a resource-sharing framework which facilitated education about liberation and a push towards acknowledging collective identities and struggles. This idea underscores all true organizing: true liberation must be collective.
Where we are today
The contemporary mainstream conversation about queer liberation is undoubtedly dominated by neoliberal reformist campaigns that actively work with oppressive systems (the state, the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, etc.) to promote queer assimilation into those same oppressive systems. Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee and Dean Spade explain in-depth the historical conditions that have allowed reformism and welfarism to gain such traction within the movement in their chapter of Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, but it essentially boils down to the framing of individuals being the historical drivers of change rather than the collective (a phenomenon referred to as the hero complex) and the government’s silencing of political dissidence.
Reformism exists in the present day queer assimilation movement in many forms, from the opening of “gender-responsive” prisons as a solution to the mistreatment and brutalization of incarcerated trans people (an excuse to expand the PIC and further incarcerated trans femmes of color) to the supposed desirability of trans inclusion in the military (which distracts from what should be the real goal, dismantling the military industrial complex and reinvesting money and resources into trans communities). Ultimately, the work of radical queer and trans BIPOC organizers is being overshadowed by the work of corporations that operate from places of privilege, opting to work within oppressive systems rather than working to dismantle them, instead promoting a trickle down model of progress that fails to consider that reformism and welfarism will not help low-income queer people, disabled queer people, or trans femmes of color. In the words of Audre Lorde: “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
Liberation isn’t a simple feat. It requires the total transformation of systems that are completely enmeshed within the fabric of society. Liberation can only be achieved by the collective, with the most marginalized leading the way. The fight for liberation can get violent. Community solidarity is a powerful tool for resistance. These are lessons we have learned from trans organizers who came before us, those whose work we continue to build on in our own lives and activism, who fought for a world where they could be free. ◆
References
Book Review: The Force of Non-Violence by Judith Butler, LSE Review of Books
The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House, Audre Lorde
The forgotten violence that helped India break free from colonial rule, The Conversation
What Happened at the Stonewall Riots? A Timeline of the 1969 Uprising, History
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries found STAR House, Global Network of Sex Work Projects
“It’s Pinkwashing:” The Case Against LGBTQ+ Military Inclusion, Explained, them.
Books
Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. Verso, 2021.
Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity during This Crisis (and the next). Verso, 2020.
Stanley, Eric A., and Nat Smith. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex. AK Press, 2016.