June 28, 1969 – July 3, 1969. Those were the dates of the Stonewall Uprising. The days – and I emphasize the plural – that changed US LGBTQ history forever. What we too often forget, with our current-day corporate-packaged Pride parades and complementary brand marketing, is the messiness of the rebellion. Like with the decades-long civil rights movement, a half century on we’ve sanitized the struggle. As the feel-good fairytale goes, “In the blink of one night a community of righteous gays stood together in kumbaya harmony to neutralize law enforcement with a single kick line.” And though the Uprising did indeed feature a kick line, it also featured violence. Lots of it. Several nights, in fact, of broken glass, raging fires, street fights and looting. The West Village as war zone.
As I type these words at the very beginning of Pride Month, folks are again taking to the streets in response to police brutality. This time the straw that broke the camel’s back was the caught-on-video torture of an African-American man named George Floyd at the hands (or rather knee) of a Minneapolis police officer, resulting in nine minutes of agony that culminated in Floyd’s death. And once again it’s a messy situation, with peaceful protesting coexisting with vandalism and looting, as it always does. As if on cue, the pundits and politicians have now scrambled to separate the “good guys” (the righteous protestors) from the “bad” (the rioters) rather than acknowledge the deeper truth. As Stonewall proved, it’s the sheer spectacle of headline-grabbing violence, lasting for many days, that often brings about change. There can be no “good guys” and “bad guys” when basic human rights are on the line. And shock-and-awe vandalism is no mere unfortunate byproduct, but a necessary means to an end. It’s why we have a parade commemorating the Stonewall Uprising – rather than, say, the isolated, one-night, little damage doing, Cooper Do-nuts Riot that occurred in LA a full decade before.
So let’s be honest. Martin Luther King Jr. never separated any “justified” protestors from “lawless” looters. He was more concerned with the conditions behind the violence than the violence itself. After all, damage to property – and hence the capitalist structure – isn’t really what needs to be condemned. Indeed, not a single person has been killed in the current protests at the hands of rioters and “outside agitators” who are causing only economic destruction. Every incident of damage done to human bodies thus far can be traced back to only one force – and it’s wearing blue.
For violence is a required check on the system – denounced and subject to control only when carried out by the marginalized, not by those in power. (See the recent storming of state capitols by white armed protestors who met little resistance from any police.) And because of this, until quite recently the mostly transgender people of color who fought for the entire LGBTQ community at Stonewall were sidelined in gay history. In fact, since we’re being honest, it was the hetero-acting, straight values-adhering queer folk – represented most notably by the white patriarchal Mattachine Society – that were more than happy to throw their gender nonconforming brothers and sisters under the bus. These were the shameful collaborators who’d always secretly envisioned “marriage equality” as the holy grail, the ones focused on gay acceptance by straight society at all costs. As opposed to, say, fighting for the many transgender women of color still legally discriminated against in healthcare and housing – not to mention most likely to be the victims of homicide – in the US today. For gay “acceptance” (like black “acceptance”) is predicated on queer folks looking and acting just like upstanding straight white people – i.e., making those in power feel comfortable as opposed to demanding that power. And for the marginalized who can’t – or don’t want to – conform, well, they’re just plain out of luck. Until the next revolution, when the cycle of protest and violence inevitably begins again.
Image credit: Elvert Barnes