The First Pride was a Riot

Pushing back against violence is at the root of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The first Pride was a riot. I’ve been thinking about the community at the Stonewall Inn that said, “no more” to constant state brutality. That night, in a space that was supposed to be safe for people of the same gender to hold hands, to dance, even kiss, in a space where trans folks could dress in clothing that didn’t feel wrong for their body, officers showed up with violence. The police often showed up with violence. But that night, the community pushed back.

Dr. King famously said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Just after 1:00am on June 28, 1969, police showed up at the Stonewall Inn unprepared. The began arresting folks, but the wagons to take the detained off to jail were delayed. The police continued to handcuff people, shove them to the floor, but the community said “enough.” They stood up, they began to push the police out of their safe space. Much of the furniture in the bar was destroyed in the process. The next day, graffiti appeared on the boarded up windows supporting LGBTQ+ rights. That night, June 29, hundreds of protestors showed up in the streets around Stonewall. Allen Ginsburg, who lived in the neighborhood, said of the protestors, “they’ve lost that wounded look” that had so characterized the queer community.

Ellis and I at the Stonewall Inn…a few years ago.

In the same speech where he called riots “the language of the unheard,” Dr. King condemned rioting. He said he believed nonviolent resistance was the more powerful way forward. But I wonder if a nonviolent start could have ever happened for LGBTQ+ people. I wonder whether we can accurately call Stonewall a “riot” by Dr. King’s definition. How violent is it to say “no?” to refuse to comply with a police order? When that order comes surrounded by violence? At Stonewall, a community used their bodies to say “no” to persistent structural violence against the community.

I’ve been thinking about Stonewall as I see images of immigration raids around the country. In a neighborhood in San Diego (where I once lived), patrons at a restaurant chanted “shame” at ICE officers who interrupted dinner on a Friday night to detain kitchen workers. One of my colleagues in El Paso is regularly going to the immigration court building to film ICE officers detaining migrants who show up for their scheduled immigration hearings. This Pride, I wonder whether the question for us is, “how do we push back against the violence?”

I’ve been thinking about the first riots of Pride, in part, because LGBTQ+ are caught up in these immigration raids. People who came to the United States to escape homophobic and transphobic violence in their countries of origin, people who had credible fear that if they returned to their neighborhood, criminals would make good on threats to kill them, are being deported. What does Pride look like for Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan makeup artist who the US Government claimed was a gang member and deported to El Salvador? Without a trial, Andry has been disappeared into El Salvador’s prison system, notoriously dangerous for LGBTQ+ people.

Pride started without a great deal of planning. There wasn’t time to organize the movement that night. People simply started saying to the police, “you’re not taking my friends.” This Pride, even as the rainbow flags fly, how will we say, “no” to violence directed at our friends?