Over 3,500 people have backed a petition to replace a New Jersey city’s Christopher Columbus statue with one of Black trans activist Marsha P Johnson.
The Christopher Columbus statue has stood in Marsha P Johnson’s home town of Elizabeth, New Jersey since 1971, but petitioners say a tribute to her would be far more fitting in light of the explorer’s problematic history.
Johnson left the town in her late teens with nothing but a bag of clothes and a few dollars to her name. She moved to New York where she became one of the central figures of the LGBT+ rights movement, and many locals feel it’s time her achievements were recognised.
“I’ve always said that Marsha was more recognised in New York City and around the world than she is in her own hometown,” her nephew, Al Michaels, told CNN.
The petition was created by 19-year-old Celine Da Silva, who also grew up in Elizabeth.
“We should commemorate Marsha P Johnson for the incredible things she did in her lifetime and for the inspiration she is to members of the LGBT+ community worldwide, especially Black trans women,” she wrote on Change.org.
“It tells me that times are changing. People are becoming more accepting to people who identify as LGBT+,” she said. “It tells me that people are realising how whitewashed our history is and how some figures that we learn about, we don’t learn everything about them.”
The nearby New Jersey towns of Camden and West Orange both moved to take down memorials to Christopher Columbus earlier this month, with the mayor of Camden saying the statue had “long pained the residents of the community.”
Both communities are still working out what should be erected as a replacement. Da Silva says local minority heroes like Marsha P Johnson are the perfect choice, and plans to bring her request to the city council.
“Obviously we’re not asking the city council to consider putting up a statue. This is a demand,” said Da Silva’s boyfriend Daniel Cano, who helped form the petition.
“Ultimately, a statue is going to come up no matter what. And we’re going to honour Marsha in the way that she deserves to be honoured.”
If LGBTQ nonprofit organizations disappeared for even a single day, hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people — especially the most vulnerable — would be cut off from health care, shelter, food, safety, and community. Today, in the midst of COVID-19 and economic collapse, our community’s nonprofits are truly and profoundly more important than ever before.
These organizations need our help. This Pride Month, we can all step up and support these organizations for Give OUT Day, the only national day of giving for the LGBTQ community. This year, over 475 LGBTQ nonprofits are participating, spanning nearly every state, D.C. and Puerto Rico, and working in every facet of queer life, from advocacy groups to community centers to performance troupes.
In the face of an unprecedented public health and economic crisis, we see these organizations working relentlessly to keep LGBTQ people healthy, delivering food to at-risk seniors and retooling their mental health services — in a matter of days — for our new world of physical distancing. We see them providing critical services, granting stipends to those who’ve suddenly lost income and finding housing for youth who are sheltered in place in abusive homes.
As the pandemic forces many of us physically apart, these organizations are offering — virtually — a sense of community, holding online spaces for healing, performance, and connection, more important now than ever.
And as protests over police brutality and systemic racism continue to grow, we see these organizations elevating Black LGBTQ voices, taking to the streets in allyship, and loudly joining calls for racial justice.
We also see how much these organizations need your help. In fact, in a survey of nonprofits by Charity Navigator and Reuters News, 83% of respondents reported that they are suffering financially due to the pandemic.
That’s where Give OUT Day comes in — and just when it’s needed most.During all of Pride Month, until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Give OUT Day (June 30), all donations to participating nonprofits on giveoutday.org help these organizations do this critical work. But Give OUT Day donations go even further: The organizations that earn the most individual donors win additional prize grants that boost their impact.
Participating in Give OUT Day is a simple way to show your pride and make a difference. Here’s how you can take part:
Right now, visit giveoutday.org/search to select which organizations you want to support. Click “donate,” and use the shopping cart to support multiple nonprofits in a single transaction.
Go a step further and click “fundraise.” Launch a fundraiser for a favorite organization by using this toolkit, and maximize your impact by reaching out to your network.
Whether or not you have the ability to donate, share giveoutday.org on social media to encourage your friends to give, especially on Give OUT Day, June 30.
Remember, though it looks different this year, Pride isn’t canceled. Show your pride by making a gift, starting a fundraiser, and sharing about Give OUT Day. You’ll support the LGBTQ community at a time of profound need — and unprecedented action.
Roger Doughty is the President of Horizons Foundation, the organizer of Give OUT Day. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, Horizons is the world’s first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people.
On her wedding day, Nicole Castillo knew that she was making a mistake. She was 20 years old, and both she and her husband knew that she was not straight.
“But at the time, it didn’t feel like it was an option to not be married, and to come out,” she said. “I was concerned about harming my family, and I stayed in that marriage for some time.”
It took Castillo, now 36, until her mid-20s to understand her sexual orientation. “I was from a generation with almost no LGBT visibility. I didn’t know of any gay or queer women.”
As Pride Month winds down, Latinx LGBTQ people report a mixture of optimism and concern for their communities, on issues ranging from the Black Lives Matter movement to violence against transgender people.
Latinx LGBTQ people say that they see significant progress in the struggle for equality, yet stress that the fight for their rights is far from over.
Castillo, from Colorado, said she doesn’t mind that in-person Pride celebrations have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Pride events are great, but they have become very mainstream, and it sometimes seems like the important issues can get lost.”
In contrast, she noted, “the Black Lives Matter protests are the most immediate, the most raw. That feels in a way more authentic that what Pride has become.”
From Stonewall to increased visibility
The Latino LGBTQ community has a rich heritage of activism. The first openly gay candidate for public office in the U.S. was Jose Julio Sarria, who ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961. In New York, one of the people credited with starting the 1969 Stonewall Riots — which helped inspire the beginning of the LGBT rights movement — was Sylvia Rivera, a transgender Puerto Rican woman.
In Los Angeles, Robbie Rodriguez, 38, program director for Equality California, said that the last several years have been challenging for Latinx LGBTQ people.
“We have dealt with the very hostile Trump/Pence administration, which has not made me feel great as a Latinx gay man,” Rodriguez said. “Almost every day, the president incites fear and emboldens bigots to be open with racism, homophobia and transphobia.”
But Rodriguez is feeling optimistic because of two recent Supreme Court rulings, one that makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and the other temporarily preserving DACA, the program that has granted deportation relief to young immigrants. “And we should look at the sense of solidarity that has developed in the community as a result of police brutality against African Americans,” he said. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the LGBTQ+ community showing up and showing allyship to the Black community, and lifting up their experiences.”
The visibility of Latinx LGBTQ characters in the media is heartening to Rodriguez, who recalled watching “The Real World” on MTV when he was a kid. “I watched the show with my family, and I remember seeing Pedro Zamora, who was out and HIV-positive. That meant a lot to me.”
In recent years, there has been increased Latinx LGBTQ representation on television, on shows like “Pose,” “One Day at a Time,” and “Love, Victor.” A 2019 GLAAD report found that the percentage of Latinx LGBTQ characters had increased on broadcast and cable, though the percentages on streaming dropped.
Vico Ortiz, a performer in Los Angeles who has appeared on shows like “Vida” and “American Horror Story,” has seen a shift in the public views of LGBTQ people—and believes that the entertainment industry plays a major role. “Having shows with queer characters is important. People who might not know any queer people see these shows, and hopefully that opens up conversations from a place of empathy and compassion.”
Ortiz, a millennial who identifies as nonbinary, describes the last few weeks as a whirlwind. “The anti-discrimination ruling at the Supreme Court was amazing, but literally two days before that, the Trump administration announced that it was taking away health care for transgender people. It’s like whiplash on your heart; we make fantastic strides, and then other stuff happens. It is frustrating; I want future queer youth not to have to deal with any of these issues.”
Ortiz noted the absence of in-person Pride events this year, but said that the Black Lives Matter movement was, for now, more important. “We might be missing some glitter parties, but we wouldn’t have Pride without riots and protests.”
Ortiz felt a heaviness on June 12, the fourth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 people dead. “I was also thinking of the queer people who may be isolating or quarantined with nonsupportive people.”
‘Fight harder, stronger and fiercer’
Like other Americans, Latinx LGBTQ people are facing the ongoing threat of the coronavirus. The pandemic has disproportionately affected Latinos, putting their health and economic well-being at risk.
For Dr. Rafael Campo, 55, the pandemic carries echoes of a previous health crisis that struck the Latinx LGBTQ community. Campo, who teaches and practices medicine at Harvard Medical School, graduated before drug treatments for HIV/AIDS had been developed.
“There is a sad resonance in the way that HIV/AIDS originally impacted the Latinx LGBTQ population, and what is happening with coronavirus now,” he said, pointing out parallels in the lack of government response, the lack of access to care, the stigma of infection and the health disparities. “How these two very different viruses impact communities of color is part of the symmetry.”
At times, Campo has felt beleaguered by the trials that the Latinx LGBTQ community seems to be facing. Some of his patients who survived the AIDS epidemic feel a sense of renewed trauma, because they are now at risk for COVID-19. “But there are reasons to be hopeful. The demonstrations and activism around racial justice show the strength of our communities. Adverse circumstances can really bring us together and help our communities to become stronger and better.“
“We carry pride within ourselves—and no one can take that away.”
In Puerto Rico, the human rights activist Pedro Julio Serrano, 45, is concerned with the ongoing violence against transgender people, which in his view is not getting the media attention it deserves. “All over the U.S., members of the transgender community are being killed, and this doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Trump’s bigotry and divisive language has contributed to this cycle of violence. “
Puerto Rico’s new civil code, which defines myriad aspects of everyday life, is another issue that is deeply troubling to Serrano. The update coded has been controversial because it potentially could be used to take away LGBTQ rights. “It makes us invisible,” Serrano said. “It no longer includes discrimination protections. Many legal experts say it is inconsistent and poorly written, a judicial mess.”
The Latino LGBTQ community remains committed to the struggle for full equality, Serrano said. “We are going to come back and fight harder, stronger and fiercer.”
Likewise, Serrano said that losing the in-person Pride events was just a temporary setback. “For sure, when you are with other people you feel empowered and you feel solidarity. But you cannot cancel true pride. It is the product of many victories and struggles. We carry pride within ourselves — and no one can take that away.”
Black queer trailblazers have changed the course of history with their contributions to activism, culture and the arts, but many of these pioneers are still fighting for their place in the history books. While some, like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, have garnered some level of acclaim, many of their stories remain under-researched and untold.
When the LGBTQ community began to record its history with some level of consistency in the 20th century, most of the documented narratives were those of white and cisgender men. It took longer for women, people of color and gender-nonconforming individuals to get their due.
In recognition of Pride Month and the anti-racism protests that have swept the United States, we asked historians and scholars which Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer figures they would like to see uplifted and celebrated.
‘Black lesbian icon’
Mabel Hampton, a Black lesbian activist, was active during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, before later going on to participate in the first national gay and lesbian march on Washington in 1979. Saidiya Hartman, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, said Hampton was a “Black lesbian icon” who witnessed a “radical transformation in the discourse around queer identity” leading to the “emergence of pride” in the years following the Stonewall riots.
“Hampton’s life bridged this really interesting period in which intimate and sexual mores were being contested in the early part of the 20th century to the total declaration of queer pride in the 1980s,” Hartman told NBC News.
As a prominent intellectual and a dancer who performed with fellow Black lesbian luminaries like comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Hartman said Hampton’s experiences illustrate the “networks of sociality which sustained Black queer life.” Hampton cleaned the houses of white families in New York City to earn an income, while she and her longtime partner, Lillian B. Foster, often passed as sisters in order to access government benefits during an era where there were few protections for same-sex couples. Hartman said these “forms of subterfuge were required in order for communities to thrive.”
Perhaps most importantly, Hampton kept notebooks detailing the contributions of Black queer people to the Harlem Renaissance, names that included performers Ethel Waters and Gladys Bentleyand poet Langston Hughes. Today, those records are housed in the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, and Hartman said they are a testament to an oft-repeated quote from historian Henry Louis Gates that the Harlem Renaissance was “surely as gay as it was Black.”
“I value the lives and the brilliance of these everyday intellectuals who were trying to build a way of existing that was outside the norm but were also creating a path for a younger generation of radical thinkers, queer activists and feminist scholars,” she added.
Ballroom culture’s ‘great innovator’
Phil Black was another early trailblazer who helped pave the way for future generations of LGBTQ people to thrive. A drag performer, Black threw the first Funmakers Ball in November 1947, in which queer and transgender entrants, the vast majority of which were people of color, would compete in pageants that combined drag, dance and other modes of performance. Sydney Baloue, a producer of HBO Max’s ballroom competition series, “Legendary,” told NBC News that these events “helped set the groundwork” for what would become New York City’s ballroom scene, as famously depicted in the 1990 documentary “Paris Is Burning.”
“Phil Black opened up doors for people like Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, Paris Dupree, Angie Xtravaganza and Avis Pendarvis, who are the mothers of the ballroom community,” said Baloue, who is currently working on a book chronicling the ballroom scene. “Black is an even greater elder in that lineage.”
In the decades following Black’s pioneering work, voguing balls became critical venues where marginalized LGBTQ people could find community. Although the pageants were rooted in what Baloue described as “creative competition,” competitors faced off against one another by forming their own “houses” — which is less a physical structure than a space where members, or “families,” can collaborate to develop a signature style. These houses emphasize the idea that an individual’s chosen family can be a space for innovation, Baloue said.
“For many of us, balls are our lifeline,” he continued. “For many of us, we’re not always understood by our biological families. It’s really important for us to have a sense of family, just like anybody else.”
Although Black’s name is largely unknown today, his role in hosting and promoting the balls — which took place at the former Rockland Palace in Harlem — briefly made him one of the most notable LGBTQ people in the world. Black was frequently featured in magazines like Jet and Ebony alongside their coverage of the ball scene, but Baloue said less attention has been paid to his presence in the archives for the same reason that Black LGBTQ people are “not put in history books in the same way that straight people and white people generally are.”
Baloue said creating space in the historical narrative for figures like Phil Black would show LGBTQ people of color that their communities have been “great entrepreneurs and great innovators in so many ways.”
“Honoring stories like his is really important,” he said. “We have a longer history than people realize.”
Pioneer of ‘nonviolent methods of protest’
Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin is best known for helping to organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, along with Martin Luther King Jr.
Umi Hsu, director of content strategy at the ONE Archives Foundation, which helps preserve LGBTQ history, said Rustin influenced King’s “nonviolent methods of protest” by telling him about the work of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the campaign for India’s independence from Britain through peaceful demonstration.
“What’s interesting about Rustin is that while he was doing such important work, he actually had a hard time as a gay man,” Hsu said. “That put him in a position where he was forced out of civil rights organizing work eventually.”
Rustin served nearly two months in jail after being arrested in 1953 for having sex in a parked car after giving a lecture in Pasadena, California. At the time, homosexuality was illegal in California. Although he was originally arrested on charges of lewd conduct and vagrancy, which were frequently used to target sex workers, he was eventually tried on a lesser crime of “sex perversion” (though earlier this year California’s governor pardoned him). Rustin had always been open about his sexual orientation, but the arrest brought renewed focus on his personal life — with Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat of South Carolina, attacking Rustin as a “sex pervert” on the Senate floor.
Rustin’s place within the civil rights movement would become a subject of contention, with NAACP Chairman Roy Wilkins urging organizers to downplay Rustin’s contributions to the March on Washington. However, Rustin would continue fighting for equal rights in the decades to come: In 1986, he spoke on behalf of a proposed bill to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the state of New York. A version of the legislation wouldn’t pass until 2002, 15 years after Rustin’s death, and it wouldn’t include gender identity until 2019.
Hsu said Rustin’s activism is an important reminder that queer people of color experience “double the amount of oppressions but also there’s double the power when these politics are addressed.” Hsu pointed to Marsha P. Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Sir Lady Java as Black trans and gender-nonconforming people “also working in that space” in the 1960s. Sir Lady Java, perhaps the least known of the four, was a nightclub performer who protested L.A.’s cross-dressing law. While the courts rejected her lawsuit trying to overturn the law, her efforts eventually led to the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ rights program.
“When people have a marginal status in more than one social category, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have any room to participate,” Hsu said. “It’s important to really focus on people who are intersectionally marginalized because this is where we can see the truths of how oppression systems work.”
‘First Black woman to demonstrate for gay rights’
Ernestine Eppenger, known as Ernestine Eckstein in her activism work, was instrumental in lobbying gay activists to adopt the same tactics of the civil rights movement. Eckstein was vice president of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, America’s first lesbian civil rights organization, and according to Eric Cervini, author of “The Deviant’s War,” she “helped radicalize” a group that could be conservative in its tactics. The Daughters of Bilitis initially opposed picketing and preferred a “suits, ties and dresses” approach to lobbying for equality, Cervini explained.
“Before Ernestine, the Daughters of Bilitis did not want to march for gay rights,” Cervini said. “They saw it as a threat. They thought it would provoke a backlash.”
In 1965, Eppenger joined a picket line at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and a second demonstration months later at the White House. Although early gay rights leaders like Barbara Gittingsand Frank Kameny were present at many of these demonstrations, Eppenger was the only person of color. What was then referred to as the “homophile movement” was “overwhelmingly white,” according to Cervini. The scarcity of Black faces made Eppenger the “first Black woman to demonstrate for gay rights,” but Cervini said that racial monoculture also came with a cost.
“At the end of the day, the homophile movement did not open its arms to her and to people of color like they should have,” he said. “Because they did not put in the work to recruit a truly diverse movement in the years before Stonewall, that’s why they faded into irrelevance.”
That’s one of the reasons, Cervini said, the historic Stonewall uprising of 1969, which included transgender people and “street kids,” was such a critical turning point for the LGBTQ rights struggle.
“Finally there was a movement that was welcoming of everyone,” he said. “I like to say that Stonewall didn’t start everything, but it certainly changed everything.”
Cervini said it’s critical to uplift the work of activists like Eppenger — along with the countless other Black LGBTQ trailblazers — because so many were “pushed out of the movement,” even as they helped to transform it.
“There has been a concerted effort throughout history to forget them,” he said. “It’s our job to tell their stories, and it’s everyone else’s responsibility to learn from them, learn from our past mistakes and make history right.”
Police have launched an investigation after a vandal attacked a local LGBT+ community centre on Pride weekend, leaving staff and volunteers stunned.
At around 10.05am on Saturday (June 27), bystanders watched in horror as a man with a golf club smashed the windows of Oakland LGBTQ Community Centre in California.
Described as “a young skinny white male”, he is said to have yelled expletives while striking the building before fleeing the scene on a bike when confronted by nearby vendors.
The all-inclusive centre was founded by two gay African American men, who have described the attack as a hate crime.
“Our organisation is Black lead and queer,” they wrote on Facebook. “We have a large banner on our window that says Black LGBTQ Lives Matter Too!
“We are clear that this was a hate crime that could have caused us to be targeted because we are Black and because we are LGBTQ.”
They said the attack has “rattled” the team, but added: “We will get through this.”
One eyewitness, Cosmos Ozansi, told ABC7 News that he was setting up his jewellery stand on the street outside the centre when he saw the angry-looking man striking the windows.
“[I yelled] ‘Stop, stop!’ as loud as I could, then he saw me.” He says the man turned and rode away on his bike.
Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf was outraged by the act of vandalism. “I am furious that anyone would commit this kind of act at this sanctuary of love, pride and family,” she said.
Oakland Police say they are actively investigating the incident.
Oakland LGBTQ Community Centre has thanked those who arrived to help them clean up the mess, as well as “everyone offering support to us through this difficult and emotional time. We appreciate you so much.”
The group has requested donations via their website, and urged people to contact the local police department and ask them to make hate crimes against Black and LGBT+ people a priority in Oakland.
After warnings that it might shut its doors for good, people have raised $250,000 to secure the future of the Stonewall Inn.
The bar is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, and was designated a US National Monument by Barack Obama in 2016 in recognition of the 1969 Stonewall riots – which were sparked by a police raid on the venue.
But despite its central role in LGBT+ history, the owners of the still-functioning bar warned ahead of the 51st anniversary of the riots last week that a prolonged period of closure due to COVID-19 has left its future in doubt.
People donate thousands to rescue Stonewall Inn.
The business warned: “Our doors have been closed for over three months to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of patrons, staff and the community.
“Even in the best of times it can be difficult to survive as a small business and we now face an uncertain future. Even once we reopen, it will likely be under greatly restricted conditions limiting our business activities.”
Within just days, a crowdfunding campaign has already raised $256,900 to help secure the future of the bar – with more than 6,400 donors contributing an average of $40 each.
A further $39,500 has been raised online for a support fund set up for Stonewall Inn staff who are out of work during the Coronavirus pandemic.
‘We must preserve the legacy.’
Meanwhile, the pro-LGBT+ Gill Foundation, set up by software engineer Tim Gill, has pledged to match $250,000 in donations to rescue the historic venue.
In a release, co-chairs Scott Miller and Tim Gill said: “Queer people of colour – including trans women of colour like Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major – led the uprisings against police brutality at Stonewall and in doing so helped spark the movement for LGBT+ equality.
“We must preserve that history and the legacy of the activists who led the charge.”
Stacy Lentz and Kurt Kelly, co-owners of the Stonewall Inn, added: “As the first and only LGBT+ National Monument, Stonewall is home not only to the history of our community, but also the history of our city and country.
“We are beyond grateful for this generous pledge that will help us keep the history alive.”
The Gill Foundation also announced it has committed $50,000 to trans groups including Trans Lifeline, the TransLatin@ Coalition, Brave Space Alliance and The Ally Coalition.
There are calls to rename John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, over his white supremacist and homophobic beliefs.
The Democratic Party of Orange County passed a resolution on Friday that called for Wayne’s name and likeness to be removed from the Orange County airport, one of several airports that serves the greater Los Angeles area, over his “racist and bigoted statements”.
Wayne was famous for his film roles in early Westerns – but the local party notes he also had “white supremacist, anti-LGBT+, and anti-Indigenous views”.
John Wayne was a proud white supremacist who decried ‘perverted fags’.
The movie star’s racist beliefs were documented in a 1971 interview with Playboy magazine, in which he insisted: “We can’t all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the Blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”
He also said: “I don’t feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago these people were slaves.”
Of gay people, he vented: “Movies were once made for the whole family. Now, with the kind of junk the studios are cranking out… I’m quite sure that within two or three years, Americans will be completely fed up with these perverted films.”
Wayne elaborated: “Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy – that kind of thing. Wouldn’t you say that the wonderful love of those two men in Midnight Cowboy, a story about two fags, qualifies?”
Rounding on indigenous Americans, Wayne also asserted: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them”, adding: “I don’t see why we owe them anything. I don’t know why the government should give them something that it wouldn’t give me.”
Calls to rename airport after local heroes.
Orange County Democrats chair Ada Briceño has made clear that calls for Wayne’s name to be removed have been a long-standing local issue.
She told CNN: “While some outside Orange County may not know of John Wayne’s beliefs in white supremacy, many Orange County residents have been calling for his removal for years. We’re seeing renewed calls for this right now, and it’s time for change.”
In a column for The Orange County Register, state senator Tom Umberg wrote that Wayne’s beliefs were “disturbing.” He added: “Those we honour reflect our values. When the millions of travellers arrive in Orange County, they should know what we honour, what values we hold, who we think is a role model. We should be proud to tell our children who our airport is named after, and why.”
He cited “thousands of heroes who have called Orange County home there are several examples of sacrifice worthy of having their names immortalised on an airport,” listing several war heroes from the area who the airport could be named after.
Five decades ago, thousands of gay and transgender activists marched from New York City’s Stonewall Inn to Central Park on the last Sunday of June. The 3-mile journey, honoring the first anniversary of the iconic 1969 Stonewall uprising, established a tradition of LGBTQ pride marches that would continue uninterrupted for 50 years and spread around the world.
And in many ways, social attitudes are ahead of the law. Five decades after people first paraded in the streets to shout out that they were proud to be gay, majorities of even doctrinally conservative religious groups support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people, and many say they know someone who is gay, although fewer say they know someone who is transgender.
Laws and visibility, however, have gone only so far. LGBTQ people are the victims of a quarter of hate crimes, and violence continues to plague Black and brown transgender people in particular. The number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups is rising. The Trump administration has embarkedonasystematicrollback of Obama-era pro-LGBTQ policies — including health care policies and religious exemptions — and has appointed a long list of judges with anti-LGBTQ track records.
Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that produces the official NYC Pride march, and other pride organizations around the world will host star-studded livestreaming events, including a rally, performances and a virtual march.
In a 2011 oral history project by SAGE, an advocacy group for older LGBTQ people, Jerry Hoose — a founding member of the radical queer rights group Gay Liberation Front who participated in the Stonewall uprising and the first Pride march — said the inaugural march, then called Christopher Street Liberation Day, was about coming out of the shadows after Stonewall and finding “pride in ourselves.”
“We marched in the sunlight up to Central Park into the Sheep Meadow, proudly, in your face, and it was just a remarkable year,” said Hoose, who died in 2015. “It was the year that changed our future and our history.”
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and alerts
Hoose attributed LGBTQ advances to work in that crucial first year after Stonewall. “Right after the riot,” he said, the “militant” activism that helped bring together the first Pride march was the most meaningful period of activism for the gay cause.
Some LGBTQ historians and leaders say the renewed focus on police brutality on the anniversary of the first Pride march shows that LGBTQ activism, and the event of Pride itself, is becoming more like it was 50 years ago.
“I don’t think it will ever come back in the same forms,” Lillian Faderman, author of “The Gay Revolution,” said of past pride events. “It’s just its natural evolution, and the present generation wants to do it differently from the way it’s been done for the past 50 years.”
Jon Boyd Carter, a Reclaim Pride organizer, downplayed the historic division between his group and the mainstream Pride parade, saying, “We are in a moment bigger than the differences held between queer organizations.
“We are in a moment where every American is being called upon to incorporate a new way of thinking about social justice into their everyday lives, and every person and organization that finds a way to authentically do that should be applauded and supported in that attempt,” Carter said.
Ellen Broidy, a co-founder of the first Pride march and a former member of the Gay Liberation Front, applauded Pride Month’s renewed intersectional focus.
“I’m thrilled to see all the young people, the diversity of the people, the intersectionality, people marching for a range of issues but keeping Black Lives Matter in the forefront,” Broidy said, adding that the “gay liberation movement” of the ’60s and the ’70s that she and her contemporaries advocated for was intersectional before the word existed in this context.
“We always believed strongly in what we now call intersectionality, in that statement that none of us are free until all of us are free,” Broidy said. “Also, the whole revolutionary idea was that none of us wanted a piece of the pie — we literally wanted to blow up the whole bakery.”
In an interview last year for NBC News’ “Stonewall 50: The Revolution” series, Broidy said, “The revolution did not happen.” One year later, however, she has updated her view.
“We are in a whole new era now,” she said. “Regrettably, it took death to bring it about, but there seems to be an energy in the streets.
“If people can keep this going, the revolution that failed to materialize in 1970 — in spite of the Black power movement, the anti-war movement, the LGBT movement, the women’s movement — might just come into being now,” she added. “I feel more optimistic than I have in a long time.”
More than a dozen New York City Department of Correction officers will be disciplined for their conduct surrounding the death of Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, 27, a transgender woman who died last year while in solitary confinement at Rikers Island jail.
Three officers and one captain will be suspended without pay immediately, the department said in a statement Friday. It was not immediately clear what disciplinary actions the remaining 13 officers would face.
The announcement comes several weeks after Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark declined to file charges following a six-month investigation into the circumstances of Cubilette-Polanco’s death.
“We are committed to ensuring that all of our facilities are safe and humane,” Department of Correction Commissioner Cynthia Brann said in a statement. “Even one death in our custody is one too many and this swift and fair determination on internal discipline makes clear that the safety and well-being of people in our custody remains our top priority.”
Cubilette-Polanco died in June 2019 after being placed in solitary confinement despite the objections of at least one doctor due to her history of seizures.
In declining to file criminal charges, Clark said in a statement that “the purview of this office is not to determine whether it was a wrong decision” to put Cubilette-Polanco in solitary confinement. Instead, it was the district attorney’s role to “determine whether that decision rose to the level of criminal behavior.”
After an “in-depth investigation,” Clark’s office determined that it would unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that officers committed a crime that caused Cubilette-Polanco’s death.
Several weeks before she died, Cubilette-Polanco had been hospitalized at the Elmhurst Hospital Prison Ward for psychiatric care after “showing radical changes in behavior” including shouting, crying, rolling around on the floor, talking to herself, expressing suicidal thoughts and charging at a jail guard, according to a Board of Correction report.
After returning to Rikers Island, jail staff tried to get her sent to restrictive housing, or solitary confinement, as a punishment for charging at the guard, according to the report. However, a psychiatrist “verbally stated that due to [her] medical history as it pertains to seizure disorder, that he would not be able to authorized [sic] a cell housing placement” in a restrictive housing unit.
Cubilette-Polanco died after suffering an epileptic seizure, according to the medical examiner’s report.
“The death of Layleen Polanco was an incredibly painful moment for our city,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement Friday. “What happened to Layleen was absolutely unacceptable and it is critical that there is accountability.”
Northern Territory MP Chansey Paech has become the first openly gay Indigenous speaker of an Australianparliament in a landmark move.
Paech took over the role of speaker from Kezia Purick, who resigned earlier this week after an independent report alleged corrupt practices.
A Labor Party MP for Namatjira, Paech was previously deputy speaker in the parliament before his appointment this week.
He told ABC News that it was an honour to be elected speaker, which is the parliament’s most senior role.
Aboriginal Speaker Chansey Paech says his appointment sends ‘a strong message’ to young people.
“It sends a strong message for our young kids, growing up, you have to believe in yourself and know that these are options for you in the future.”
Another Aboriginal MP, Ngaree Ah Kit, has been elected as deputy speaker of the parliament – which makes it the first time in history two Indigenous people have held the senior positions in a parliament.
It sends a strong message for our young kids, growing up, you have to believe in yourself and know that these are options for you in the future.
Tweeting about the milestone, Paech said: “The Northern Territory has many things to be proud of and today we add to that list! We’re officially the first parliament in Australia to have an Aboriginal speaker and deputy speaker.”
Getting to this point was no easy feat for the politician. Following his election in 2016, Paech told Buzzfeed that he faced smear campaigns from opponents who tried to convince Aboriginal voters to not support him because of his sexuality.
Voters did not respond well to a smear campaign based on his sexuality.
“That kind of language the electorate didn’t respond well to.
“The most beautiful thing was when I was at a remote community [campaigning] and people said to me, ‘They said you were a gay and we said we didn’t care, we just want houses,’”
“I will stand proud with my Labor colleagues across our vast lands to ensure that all Territorians have equality and that we reach a time when our first Australians are constitutionally recognised,” he said.
Following his election in 2016, Paech delivered a rousing speech in parliament calling for equality for all.
“I am eternally proud of who I am and where I come from. I own it and wear it with pride,” he said at the time.