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The corporate sponsorship put the mainstream gay and lesbian organizations in a tough spot, leading to the exclusion of a few of the more “radical” queer groups. Image by Allan Tannenbaum, via events surrounding Stonewall 25 reminded many of Christopher Street Liberation Day 1973 though there were approximately a million more people in Manhattan for the 1994 gathering. “AIDS: WHERE IS YOUR RAGE? ACT UP” – “SILENCE = DEATH,” contingent, Spirit of Stonewall alternative march, New York City, June 1994. We’re as thankful as ever for queer radicals. Some companies then, as now, truly supported the queer community many didn’t. Thankfully, the radicals of 1973-Craig Rodwell, Sylvia Rivera, Arthur Bell, Lee Brewster, and others-cried foul. In particular, the bars saw Pride-what had been a political event-as a chance to make a profit, and they insisted that organizers turn the march around-it couldn’t end at Central Park, they’d make no money it had to end in the Village, near their businesses.Īnd so began the commercialization of Pride. Then, when “the middle class invaded, our ideology changed, and we acquired property for our functions.” Property required money money meant sponsorship sponsorship meant seeking help from the very institutions against which they’d previously rebelled: straight-owned bars and bathhouses. At the beginning, Arthur Bell wrote, everyone was bursting with idealism.
Crowd size at first gay pride parade in new york city archive#
Image by Leonard Fink courtesy of The LGBT Community Center National History Archive ( 1973, the activists who’d created New York’s newly visible queer community were eating their own. Johnson & Sylvia Rivera, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.) contingent, Christopher Street Liberation Day, New York City, June 24, 1973.
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and we all lived, touched, smiled and-not tolerated, but welcomed-one another’s differences not as a lessening of our own particular selves, but as endless compliments to that spark of self which is the sum of one soul.” There were no bands, no speeches, no vendors, no agenda at all. It was a celebration of queer existence it was a protest like no other. And out they came.īy the time they hit Central Park, the group stretched back 20 blocks. “Come on out or I’ll point you out!” someone yelled. Riemer ( York’s first Christopher Street Liberation Day represented, one participant said, “the summoning up of a whole lifetime’s desire to finally come clear.” As a few hundred people left Sheridan Square and headed up Sixth Avenue-led by Sylvia Rivera screaming herself hoarse the entire way-marchers saw queer people they knew on the sidewalks, not quite ready to take the step. Photographer unknown, image courtesy of L. In San Francisco, the old-guard homophiles refused to accept New York as the birthplace of gay activism, but a few young radicals held a Gay-In just the same.Ĭentral Park, Christopher Street Liberation Day, June 28, 1970. Although the rioting in Greenwich Village was not, by any definition, the “start” of Gay Liberation, nor was Stonewall the first time queer people fought back, the mythical story of the nights of rage on Christopher Street led directly to a decision to cancel the Annual Reminders in Philadelphia and replace them with a Stonewall commemoration: Christopher Street Liberation Day.Īlthough activists in Los Angeles and Chicago weren’t thrilled about the New York-focused celebration, they recognized the importance of the event, and the local gay organizations put together marches of their own for the last weekend in June. Image by Leonard Fink courtesy of The LGBT Community Center National History Archive ( YOU THINK HOMOSEXUALS ARE REVOLTING? YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS WE ARE!” screamed one of the pamphlets handed out during the melee on Christopher Street that started with a raid at the Stonewall in the early hours of Jand continued through the first days of July.
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“CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY 1970,” Gay Activists Alliance members (including Jim Owles, right), with the lead banner at the first Christopher Street Liberation Day, New York City, June 28, 1970.