[Peace] Local LGBT Organizing--get involved!

[martin smith]

Local Upcoming LGBT Organizing:


This Sunday June
28, Lori Serb and Caroline Nappo will be hosting the Prairie Grassroots
radio show on WEFT 90.1 FM (streaming online at www.weft.org) 
from 10-11 AM.  The show will focus on LGBT history, civil rights, and
the legacy of the Stonewall rebellion.  The fortieth anniversary of
Stonewall is this weekend, June 29.



NEXT MEETINGS:

On Sunday June 28 we will have
another sign-making party at Lori Serb's
house to help decorate an Equal Marriage Float for the Champaign-Urbana
Fourth of July Parade.  

ALL ARE WELCOME!!!--AND Lori's house is located at 509 S. Race in
Urbana (on the corner of Race and
California).  We will have supplies, but feel free to bring some of
your own! We have paint, signs, and construction paper.  



We will have another Ad Hoc LGBT Organizing general meeting on Tuesday, June 30, at 7 pm at the
Collective Turf office in Urbana.  This will be our last meeting before
the Fourth of July parade.  At that time we'll get final logistics pinned down,
including a date/time for building the actual float.  Get Involved!

*************************************

http://socialistworker.org/2009/06/25/birth-of-gay-power


The birth of gay power

June 25, 2009




Forty years ago, on June 28, a police
raid on an unexceptional gay bar, the Stonewall Inn in New York City,
sparked nights of rioting and demonstrations. The Stonewall riots
marked the beginning of a new LGBT movement against bigotry and for
justice.




Veteran activist and SocialistWorker.org contributor Sherry Wolf is the author of a new book Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation. Here, we publish an excerpt from the book that describes the events at Stonewall.


The Stonewall Inn in New York City (Diana Davies)





IN A society filled with hatred, fear and ignorance of
homosexuality, there was at least one public venue for socializing
where gays and lesbians in most major towns and cities could go--the
bars. But as with all public life for LGBT people, the bars also
provided a place for police and authorities to harass and humiliate
their victims.




From police entrapment in public cruising spots to raids on bars for
perceived "disorderly" conduct within, the cultural openings and
nascent activism of gays and lesbians was frustrated by state
repression from California to New York. Despite there being no explicit
laws against serving gays, many bars refused to do so, and there was no
legal recourse since kissing or dancing with a member of the same sex
and cross-dressing were considered disorderly.




It was in this context that the Mafia came to run many of the
drinking establishments that catered to gays, lesbians and
transgendered people in New York City. The Stonewall Inn was no
exception.




Located at the crossroads of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue
South, near a major subway station and steps away from the former
offices of the nation's largest independent weekly, the Village Voice,
the Stonewall Inn was dark, with two bars, a jukebox and an eclectic
crowd of drag queens, gay street youth, cruising men, and a smattering
of lesbians.





There was no running water to wash the glasses of watered-down booze
and beer that were rinsed in a murky tub behind the main bar, leading
to at least one known outbreak of hepatitis among customers. Black,
Latino and white LGBT folks mixed and mingled there, one of the few
joints around with dancing. Film historian and author of The Celluloid Closet,
Vito Russo, described the place as "a bar for the people who were too
young, too poor or just too much to get in anywhere else. The Stonewall
was a street queen hangout in the heart of the ghetto."




As with most drinking establishments that catered to gays, the Mob
owner, Fat Tony, paid off the cops to keep the place from being shut
down for city code violations. For a bar that took in between $5,000
and $6,000 on an average Friday night, Fat Tony had little problem
skimming off $1,200 a month to assuage New York's finest in the local
Sixth Precinct.




Yet raids were still commonplace at bars like the Stonewall--one had
occurred there just days before the riots--but a choreographed kabuki
routine was established between mobsters and cops, each of whom played
out their roles to keep up appearances, while never threatening their
mutual access to easy cash at the expense of the LGBT clientele.




Bars generally reopened the night after a raid, as happened at the
Stonewall during the last week of June 1969. To this day rumors and
speculation swirl around the reasoning for people's response to the
police raid on the night of June 28. Police asserted that gay Wall
Street brokers, who could not be legally bonded by brokerage houses due
to their homosexuality, were being blackmailed, and exposure would have
destroyed the lives of those men. Others suggest that it was the
shocking death earlier that week of 47-year-old gay icon Judy Garland
that exacerbated anger that night.




Whatever the immediate catalyst for the unprecedented response to a
routine raid, the fact is that lives immersed in shame and secrecy in a
world rocked by social upheaval and defiance could not have remained
untouched much longer by the ferment that surrounded them. It was,
after all, 1969.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -




UNDER THE pretext of the Stonewall Inn's operating without a liquor
license, a handful of police, led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine,
figured they'd make quick work of shutting down the bar and rounding up
its patrons that night. Sexist and homophobic stereotypes of gays and
lesbians certainly reassured the cops that resistance was unlikely at
best, irrelevant at worst. Initially, when the cops forced the men and
women inside to line up, show identity papers and prepare to be
arrested, everyone did as they were told, despite some cheeky back
talk. But as crowds gathered outside and the harassment built, a once
buoyant, even carnivalesque mood was transformed into active rage.




This snippet from the New York Daily News article headlined
"Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad" provides a distressing
glimpse of the smug contempt toward LGBT people at that time. The
article begins: "She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her
mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was
angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old [sic] stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street."




The Village Voice coverage of events of the first night of
rioting captures not only the spirit of the fight but also the open
disdain that even progressive writers had for gay people. Keep in mind
that this account was written by two journalists 20 years before anyone
ever thought to openly invoke words like "fag" and "dyke" as ironically
empowering--in 1969, these were insensitive, nasty slurs.




"[A]s the patrons trapped inside were released one by one, a crowd
started to gather on the street...initially a festive gathering,
composed mostly of Stonewall boys who were waiting around for friends
still inside or to see what was going to happen," the Voice
reported. "Cheers would go up as favorites would emerge from the door,
strike a pose, and swish by the detective with a "Hello there, fella."
The stars were in their element. Wrists were limp, hair was primped,
and reactions to the applause were classic...




"Suddenly the paddy wagon arrived, and the mood of the crowd
changed. Three of the more blatant queens--in full drag--were loaded
inside, along with the bartender and doorman, to a chorus of catcalls
and boos from the crowd. A cry went up to push the paddy wagon over,
but it drove away before anything could happen. With its exit, the
action waned momentarily. The next person to come out was a dyke, and
she put up a struggle--from car to door to car again...




"Pine ordered the three cars and paddy wagon to leave with the
prisoners before the crowd became more of a mob. 'Hurry back,' he
added, realizing he and his force of eight detectives, two of them
women, would be easily overwhelmed if the temper broke...It was at that
moment that the scene became explosive. Limp wrists were forgotten...




"'Pigs!' 'Faggot cops!' Pennies and dimes flew. I stood against the
door. The detectives held at most a 10-foot clearing. Escalate to
nickels and quarters. A bottle. Another bottle. Pine says, 'Let's get
inside. Lock ourselves inside, it's safer.'...




"The door crashes open, beer cans and bottles hurtle in. Pine and his troop [sic]
rush to shut it. At that point, the only uniformed cop among them gets
hit with something under his eye. He hollers, and his hand comes away
scarlet. It looks a lot more serious than it really is. They are
suddenly furious. Three run out in front to see if they can scare the
mob from the door. A hail of coins. A beer can glances off Deputy
Inspector Smyth's head...




"The cop who is cut is incensed, yells something like, 'So, you're
the one who hit me!' And while the other cops help, he slaps the
prisoner five or six times very hard and finishes with a punch to the
mouth. They handcuff the guy as he almost passes out...




"The exit left no cops on the street, and almost by signal, the crowd erupted into cobblestone and bottle heaving [sic].
The reaction was solid: they were pissed. The trash can I was standing
on was nearly yanked out from under me as a kid tried to grab it for
use in the window-smashing melee. From nowhere came an uprooted parking
meter--used as a battering ram on the Stonewall door...




"By now, the mind's eye has forgotten the character of the mob; the
sound filtering in doesn't suggest dancing faggots any more [sic].
It sounds like a powerful rage bent on vendetta...One detective arms
himself in addition with a sawed-off baseball bat he has found. I hear,
'We'll shoot the first motherfucker that comes through that door.'...




"I can only see the arm at the window. It squirts liquid into the
room, and a flaring match follows. Pine is not more than 10 feet away.
He aims his gun at the figures. He doesn't fire. The sound of sirens
coincides with the whoosh of flames where the lighter fluid was
thrown...It was that close."




After this initial 45-minute confrontation, the riot squad arrived,
and for hours, a cat-and mouse game ensued between groups of police and
groups of rioters, numbering around two thousand in all. In a decade punctuated by riots in most
major cities, it was a rare victory for the rioters over the police.




The fact that it had been "faggots," "trannies," "dykes," and street
kids who delivered a decisive blow to the police was lost on nobody.
News of the first night's rebellion spread widely, and by the following
evening, organized leftists and more gays, lesbians, transvestites and
transgendered people came out to see what would happen, catch a glimpse
of the previous night's detritus, and snag their own opportunity for
revenge against police who had humiliated and beaten them all for years.




The violence resumed each evening through Wednesday night, July 2,
with taunts from young gays and chants by experienced activists stoking
police violence through the labyrinthine streets of Greenwich Village.
Mortified that they had been disgraced by a bunch of "queers," the cops
returned in force each night to try and recapture Christopher Street.
They never did.




Most eyewitness reports recount the leading role played by some of
the most despised and oppressed groupings within the LGBT community. A
multiracial lot of poor gay teens, many living on the streets because
they had been tossed out of homes or had run away from abuse, taunted
the cops with abandon. Transvestites who camped and mocked the cops
while striking blows with spiked heels showed that defiance and humor
could be complementary. And some reports credited at least one butch
lesbian with a furious display of resistance that shamed some of the
men present into shedding their passivity and fighting back that first
night.




Deputy Inspector Pine, who had fought in the Second World War and
was injured in the Battle of the Bulge, where 19,000 American soldiers
died, said of the first night of rioting, "There was never any time
that I felt more scared than I felt that night."




Beat poet Allen Ginsburg walked through the Village that weekend and
poignantly summed up the atmosphere: "You know, the guys there were so
beautiful--they've lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years
ago."




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHAT SEPARATED the Stonewall Riots from all previous gay activism
was not merely the unexpected nights-long defiance in the streets, but
the conscious mobilization in the riot's wake of new and seasoned
activists who gave expression to this more militant mood.




Like a dam bursting, Stonewall was the eruption after 20 years of
trickling progress by small handfuls of men and women whose conscious
organizing gave way to the spontaneous wave of fury. The riots alone
would not be remembered today for transforming gay politics and life
had they not been followed by organizations that transformed the raw
outrage into an ongoing social force.




A clash between the old-guard organizers and newly rising militants
was apparent from the Sunday of the riots, when Mattachine activists
who'd met with the mayor's office and police posted this sign on the
front of the Stonewall: "We homosexuals plead with our people to please
help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the
Village--Mattachine." Their pleas were ignored.




Each night thereafter through Wednesday, more and more gays and
straight leftists, from socialists and Black Panthers to the Yippies
and Puerto Rican Young Lords, arrived on the scene to participate in
the latest confrontation with police.




By the time the riots subsided, activists began distributing
leaflets that read, "Do You Think Homosexuals Are Revolting? You Bet
Your Sweet Ass We Are," and announced a meeting at a Village leftist
venue known as Alternative U. What began as an ad hoc committee of
Mattachine-New York to organize a march in commemoration of the riots
evolved into a full-blown organization, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF).




In conscious tribute to the South Vietnamese National Liberation
Front then fighting the U.S. government in Southeast Asia, these
activists wanted to confront not just the stifling homophobia of U.S.
society, but the entire oppressive and exploitative imperial edifice.
From the earliest gathering of the GLF, disputes about the political
perspective of the movement were framed in terms of whether to focus
exclusively on LGBT issues and consciousness-raising, or to embrace a
broader revolutionary agenda and solidarity with other oppressed
minorities.




But almost all the newly radicalizing activists agreed that the old
guard's approach needed to be upended. Looking back years later on the
debates between the more conservative Daughters of Bilitis and
Mattachine leaderships, and the new radicals, one prominent militant,
Jim Fouratt, summarized the tensions of that time: "We wanted to end
the homophile movement. We wanted them to join us in making the gay
revolution. We were a nightmare to them. They were committed to being
nice, acceptable status quo Americans, and we were not; we had no
interest at all in being acceptable."




One agenda key to all the new gay liberationists was the act of
coming out, since most gays remained publicly closeted. As D'Emilio
notes, this cathartic act of coming out publicly--to one's family and
friends, at work, and on the streets--"quintessentially expressed the
fusion of the personal and political that the radicalism of the late
1960s exalted." Shedding their internalized homophobia may have opened
gays and lesbians to occasional attacks, but it also allowed them to
claim a sense of self-respect that was incompatible with life in the
closet. "Coming out," D'Emilio explains, "provided gay liberation with
an army of permanent enlistees."




Ironically, the right wing's fears that gay visibility would
encourage others to either experiment with homosexuality or at least be
tolerant of it turned out to be accurate. While the right may shudder
at that fact, the widening visibility and confidence of a gay movement
did pave the way for others to come out and has transformed public
consciousness ever since. Gallup polls taken over 30 years on questions
regarding homosexuality show enormous advances. Since 1977, public
support for legalization of "homosexual relations between consenting
adults" has risen from 43 percent to a record 59 percent in 2007. In
that same poll, 89 percent of Americans today believe that "homosexuals
should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities." Stonewall's
wake created the conditions for this rise in social consciousness.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE INFLUENCE of small radical groups in the GLF was evident in its statement to one underground newspaper, the Rat:

We are a revolutionary homosexual group of men and women formed with
the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot
come about unless existing social institutions are abolished. We reject
society's attempt to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature.
We are stepping outside these roles and simplistic myths. We are going
to be who we are. At the same time, we are creating new social forms
and relations--that is, relations based upon brotherhood, cooperation,
human love and uninhibited sexuality. Babylon has forced us to commit
ourselves to one thing...revolution. 


  

  

In response to the Rat's question, "What makes you
revolutionaries?" GLF members wrote, "We identify ourselves with all
the oppressed: the Vietnamese struggle, the third world, the blacks,
the workers...all those oppressed by this rotten, dirty, vile,
fucked-up capitalist conspiracy."




One of the earliest protests launched by the GLF was against the Village Voice,
the very newspaper whose account of the Stonewall Riots was circulated
and cited in periodicals throughout the world. To raise money through
dances and to publicize its activities, the GLF tried to advertise in
the Voice, which refused to print the word "gay." Considering
the word to be offensive and "equitable with 'fuck' and other
four-letter words," the Voice's offices were soon deluged with
petitions carrying thousands of signatures demanding they alter their
policy, forcing them to concede.




As dozens of chapters of the GLF spread across the country, even to
Britain, similar protests converged on newspapers, demanding respect
and representation. The Los Angeles Times had even refused to
print the word "homosexual" in its advertising, despite less flattering
references to gays in cultural revues in the "family newspaper." The San Francisco Examiner
was picketed that fall for referring to gays and lesbians as
"semi-males" and "women who aren't exactly women." Even the right to
put up flyers and distribute gay newspapers in the bars catering to
LGBT people had to be fought for and won through protest.




The GLF launched its own newspaper, Come Out! in the fall of 1969, which became a popular means of disseminating ideas and movement information. Gay Power and Gay also premiered that year, each selling 25,000 copies per issue, expressing the hunger for an independent LGBT press.




Later that year, a group of activists split from the GLF and formed
a new single-issue group, the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA), with a
constitution that defined its agenda as "exclusively devoted to the
liberation of homosexuals and avoids involvement in any program of
action not obviously relevant to homosexuals." Right from the get-go,
they aimed their sights on getting rid of discrimination against LGBT
people in the workplace and putting heat on local politicians to change
bigoted laws. GLF and GAA collaborated on many efforts, including
protests against further police raids and the annual Stonewall
commemoration march.




Perhaps one of the greatest movement victories of that era came out
of protests against the American Psychiatric Association's (APA)
designation of homosexuality as a mental illness. So long as LGBT
people were pathologized as sick, social and legal constraints would
remain.




Angry protests disrupted the usually placid APA gatherings in the
early 1970s. Militants Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny demanded and
took seats at the table to discuss the damage psychiatrists'
"therapies" were doing to the lives of gays and lesbians. One gay
psychiatrist appeared on an APA panel wearing a mask and disguising his
voice to plead for an alteration of that body's policy. In 1973, the
APA's board of trustees removed homosexuality from its list of mental
illnesses. Five years later, gay and lesbian psychiatrists formed a
caucus within the APA--never again would a gay psychiatrist have to
hide from his colleagues behind a grotesque mask.




It was a major breakthrough when, on August 21, 1970, Black Panther
Party cofounder Huey Newton wrote the first openly pro-gay statement by
a major heterosexual movement activist of any race, which was printed
in the pages of the Black Panther, the party's newspaper.




In "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters
About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements," Newton
admitted that the Black Panther Party had been inconsiderate concerning
gays and lesbians. He argued, "Homosexuals are not given freedom and
liberty by anyone in the society. Maybe they might be the most
oppressed people in the society." Newton also accepted the criticism of
gay activists, "The terms 'faggot' and 'punk' should be deleted from
our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally
designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people."




The radical transformation taking place in the minds of many gay activists was reflected in the following excerpt from the Gay Flames pamphlet, written by the Chicago chapter of the GLF.





[B]ecause of the rampant oppression we see--of Black, third world
people, women, workers--in addition to our own; because of the corrupt
values, because of the injustices, we no longer want to "make it" in
Amerika...
  

  

Our particular struggle is for sexual self-determination, the
abolition of sex-role stereotypes and the human right to the use of
one's body without interference from the legal and social institutions
of the state. Many of us have understood that our struggle cannot
succeed without a fundamental change in society which will put the
source of power (means of production) in the hands of the people who at
present have nothing...
  

  

But as our struggle grows, it will be made clear by the changing
objective conditions that our liberation is inextricably bound to the
liberation of all oppressed people. 



*******************************************************
ISO Resources:
socialismconference.org
internationalsocialist.org
haymarketbooks.org
socialistworker.org
isreview.org

ISO Champaign Meetings:
Thursdays, 8pm, Armory 147
All are welcome

Socialist Worker & Haymarket Books Tabling
Tuesdays, Main Quad at UIUC, 12:00-1:00pm
(during inclement weather, we will be inside the Student Union)

Socialist Happy Hour!
An evening of informal political discussion
Fridays at 8:00pm: All are welcome
Blind Pig Brewery (120 N. Neil St.)
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