[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Come Celebrate LGBT Pride and watch Screaming Queens with us!

[Chris Tuck]

----
*Celebrate LGBT Pride and the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall!
*
the documentary, Screaming Queens, at the Urbana Independent Media Center
(IMC)
Time: Thursday (tomorrow), 8pmPlace: In the basement (side door on the north
side of the building) of the IMC.
With Whom and Why:  We are watching the movie with a new LGBTQA rights group
that is starting up locally and trying to help build a new LGBTQA civil
rights movement as well as getting people ready to organize for the national
march in October.
** <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464189/>Below is a synopsis of the movie:
*Screaming Queens*: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria
 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464189/>

It's a hot August night in San Francisco in 1966. Compton's Cafeteria, in
the seedy Tenderloin district, is hopping with its usual assortment of
transgender people, young street hustlers, and down-and-out regulars. The
management, annoyed by the noisy crowd at one table, calls the police. When
a surly cop, accustomed to manhandling Compton's clientele, attempts to
arrest one of the queens, she throws her coffee in his face. Mayhem erupts
-- windows break, furniture flies through the air. Police reinforcements
arrive, and the fighting spills into the street. For the first time, the
drag queens band together to fight back, getting the better of the cops,
whom they kick and stomp with their high-heeled shoes and beat with their
heavy purses. For everyone at Compton's that night, one thing was certain --
things would never be the same again.

*Screaming Queens* introduces viewers to a diverse cast of former
prostitutes, drag entertainers, police officers, ministers and neighborhood
activists, all of whom played a part in the events leading up to the
Compton's Cafeteria riot. Mixing recent interviews with archival footage,
printed documents, impressionistic reenactments and period music, the
program depicts a marginalized community few people know, one that exists in
the midst of a city famous for its cosmopolitan glamour. With extraordinary
candor and from differing points of view, the subjects recount the
difficulties they encountered in the Tenderloin, as well as the sense of
community they created there in the mid-1960s. Felicia Elizondo tells of
prostituting herself in order to survive. Aleshia Brevard, a drag
entertainer, describes how her talent spared her from street prostitution.
Perhaps most surprising is Sgt. Elliot Blackstone, who helps explain the
conflict between the San Francisco Police Department and the city's
transgender community and how the SFPD's policies changed to reflect greater
acceptance in the years following the 1966 riot.

The documentary goes on to show the connection between transgender activism
and the larger social upheavals affecting the United States in the 1960s:
the civil rights and sexual liberation movements, the youth counterculture,
urban renewal, and Great Society antipoverty programs. "Glide Memorial
Methodist Church first reached out to the transgender community in these
years," the Rev. Ed Hansen explains, "because of new thinking about the
church's role in society." Amanda St. Jaymes and Tamara Ching, both
transsexual activists and former prostitutes, recount the ferment in the
Tenderloin in the 1960s as well as the growing sense of dignity among
transgender people. But in the summer of 1966, many others, including most
San Francisco police officers, did not share these new ideas. By bringing
these social and political tensions to light, *Screaming Queens* offers
viewers a fuller understanding of the events and conditions that led up to
the riot.

Further, *Screaming Queens* explores the reverberations, both large and
small, of the rise of transgender activism, a story in which the riot at
Compton's Cafeteria plays a pivotal role. Sgt. Blackstone tells of singing
"We Shall Overcome" with Tenderloin activists who successfully fought for
new social services for their community. Suzie Cooke recounts her job as a
transsexual counselor in one of the new agencies founded after the riot.
Ching connects the Tenderloin transsexuals' new activism to the rising Gay
liberation movement. And St. Jaymes explains that although the queens from
Compton's were "wild as the wind," they were "determined to make something
of themselves, and be something other than prostitutes."

The film ends on a high note. It shows how in just two short years
transgender activism helped transform San Francisco culture in subtle and
profound ways and presents reflective comments from the Compton's Cafeteria
subjects who bravely ushered in a controversial revolution that continues
today.

*Screaming Queens* sets out to foster a better understanding of the
experiences of transgender people and to inform a broad audience of their
often-difficult lives and unheralded accomplishments. Along the way, the
program also illuminates the interplay of urban politics, community
mobilization and social services in creating the modern inner city.

This important documentary tells a forgotten San Francisco story of dramatic
social change from the compelling perspective of firsthand participants. The
film's story focuses on the experiences of the rioters themselves, the
police and the social-activist clergy members. It also follows historian
Susan Stryker's rediscovery of the 1966 disturbance at Compton's Cafeteria.
At that time, transgender people faced serious employment discrimination,
police harassment and other difficulties. The program's subjects describe
the challenging circumstances and the misconduct of officials that drove
them to take militant action in the streets. *Screaming Queens* then
examines the significant changes -- in police practices, social services and
self-image -- that came out of the conflict. In her story within the story,
Stryker reveals how the Compton's Cafeteria riot, although not as large as
New York's Stonewall conflict, was a dramatic turning point in a
decades-long process of transgender community formation and political
mobilization in San Francisco, a process that involved dramatic changes in
medical practices, urban politics, neighborhood geography and public
consciousness.

*Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria* is produced in
association with The Independent Television Service (ITVS) and KQED Public
Television.



-- 
Chris Tuck
-Undergrad-UIUC
     Political Science, Philosophy, Physics.

-Carroll Fire Dept.
     Firefighter/EMT-B
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