Our story begins more than 50 years ago,
on a hot summer night on June 28, 1969.
We are on Christopher Street
in the West Village in New York City
and the Public Morals Squad of the NYPD is conducting a raid.
This was a very common thing in the 1960s.
The police used to raid gay bars
with the excuse of cracking down on illegal activity and prostitution.
But that night, people fought back.
And with supporters, they rioted and protested,
calling to an end of the criminalization of their lifestyles.
Reportedly that night, Sylvia Rivera said to her lover,
“I’m not missing a minute of this.
It’s the revolution!”
I love the story of Sylvia Rivera
because she was someone who did not
apologize for her non-conforming gender identity
or for her identity as a Latina.
Very often we idealize social movements.
But social movements also have their limitations sometimes.
And Sylvia Rivera was someone who revealed the limitations
of the gay liberation movement in the ’70s,
and who pushed against them,
for herself and for trans people and people of color,
who were not on the movement’s agenda.
Sylvia Rivera was politicized by the Stonewall Riots.
She was inspired by them.
And she joined the Gay Activist Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front
in fighting for nondiscrimination ordinances
in housing and employment in New York City.
However, as a trans Latina woman of Puerto Rican
and Venezuelan background,
she was an outlier in a movement which benefited mainly gay white men.
And on the other hand, she was also shunned by lesbian feminists
who saw trans women as a sort of caricature of womanhood
and thought that that was sexist.
So feeling the cold shoulder from both sides,
she shifted gears and she joined forces with her friend Marsha P. Johnson.
And together they founded STAR,
which stands for Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
STAR was a militant group and youth shelter for trans teenagers.
And that was a very important thing for Sylvia.
It was crucial because she herself knew
how vulnerable trans teenagers were.
I feel that by telling her story,
others will feel as inspired as I am by
her struggle and her willingness to fight for people
with similar life experiences to hers.
And her vision to join forces with different social movements,
recognizing those moments of intersectionality.
Latina history is American history.