WEBVTT - Sylvia Rivera 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.000 Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:13.800 Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:18.919 I'm Tracy the Wilson. So today's subject, which is transgender 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.760 activist Sylvia Rivera is often compared to Rosa Parks, like 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:26.000 I would say seventy percent of the articles, but I 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:31.000 read researching this episode compared her to Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks, 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.200 as you probably know, became famous in part for refusing 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:37.919 to give up her bus seat on a segregated bus, 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:43.080 and Sylvia Rivera became famous in part for purportedly throwing 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:46.640 the first bottle at a police officer during the Stonewall Riots. 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:51.239 But really, Rosa Parks and Sylvia Rivera almost could not 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:55.480 be more different from each other. Rosa Parks's case was 0:00:55.680 --> 0:01:01.360 chosen specifically to try to overturn bus segregation Montgomery, Alabama, 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:05.840 precisely because she seemed really polite. She was married, she 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:07.920 was soft spoken, she went to church, and she had 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.800 no criminal records, so basically there was nothing in her 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.160 background that might turn white people off to the idea 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:17.320 that she deserved the same basic civil rights that they did. 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:20.600 Sylvia Rivera, on the other hand, has a lot more 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.800 in common with Claudett Colvin, who was also arrested for 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.640 refusing to give up a seat on a segregated bus 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:31.759 in Montgomery. But Claudett Colvin did not become the household 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.080 name that Rosa Parks did. Because she was an unmarried, 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.280 pregnant teenager who had a reputation for being a troublemaker. 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:42.280 Civil rights leaders deliberately didn't pursue her case because they 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:44.880 knew it would be a hard one to win. They 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:49.080 held out for a more so called respectable plaintiff instead, 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:52.639 And that brings us to Sylvia Rivera and the years 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:56.960 immediately after the Stonewall riots. She campaigned bravely and stridently 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.880 and vocally for the rights of gay and transgender people. 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.080 Although the term transgender, which is used to describe people 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.880 whose gender and identity doesn't match up with the sex 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.600 that they were assigned when they were born, that word 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.079 had not been coined yet. But Sylvia was also loud 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:17.160 and aggressive and angry and poor, sometimes even homeless. She 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.000 had a history of sex work and drug addictions. Her 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.440 mannerisms were really flamboyant, in your face. So when the 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:28.040 gay rights movement started trending towards so called respectability. Sylvia 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.560 got really pushed to the sidelines along with a lot 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.040 of other transgender people. She refused to be put in 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.960 a box, and so she wound up being excluded from 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:39.080 the very movement that she was fighting for, and she 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:43.120 was for decades pretty much forgotten about. So before we 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.480 get started, there's a word of caution about this story. 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.400 Because Sylvia ran away from home when she was only eleven. 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.360 Some of the events that happened to her, especially in 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.560 her young life, are disturbing. So parents and teachers, before 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.480 you share this with young people, I recommend listening to 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.200 it yourself first. And as a second note, some of 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:04.720 the language that was used at the time that Sylvia 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.320 lived and that she used about herself isn't the preferred 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.440 language that we used today, and will sort of point 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.560 out those as they come up. Uh. So, now that 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.360 you've been warned, we will jump in as we usually 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.239 do at the very beginning. Sylvia was actually born Ray 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.919 Rivera on July two of nineteen fifty one. Her mother 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.440 was Venezuelan and her father was Puerto Rican. Sylvia's mother 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.160 committed suicide by eating rat poison when Sylvia was three. 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.920 She also tried to kill Sylvia at that time, but 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:40.560 Sylvia survived and went on to be raised by her grandmother, 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:45.760 via Hita. Via Hita raised both Sylvia and Sylvia's half sister. 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.600 Viahita was essentially functioning as a single parent. Her husband 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:54.200 had abandoned her, and Sylvia's father, who had also abandoned 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:59.640 the family, was not paying child support. Sylvia's grandmother was 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.240 also very strict. Although she taught Sylvia to cook and 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.080 to sew and too niche, she really did not like 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:11.040 it when Sylvia started wearing girls clothes. Viajita would punish Sylvia, 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:16.120 sometimes physically, for wearing makeup and for dressing and girl's clothing, and, 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.320 as Sylvia described in the Oral History, Making History the 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:25.120 struggle for gay and lesbian equal rights, her grandmother would say, quote, 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:27.640 we don't do this. You're one of the boys. I 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.880 want you to be a mechanic, and Sylvia would answer, no, 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.240 I want to be a hairdresser, and I want to 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.800 wear these clothes. From Sylvia's point of view, her grandmother 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.320 also didn't like her because her skin was too dark. 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:42.359 She had heard her grandmother say that she wanted a 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:45.839 white granddaughter instead, and the struggle between the two of 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.480 them went on until at the age of ten, Sylvia 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.680 tried to commit suicide by taking her grandmother's pills. She 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.120 wound up instead in the hospital for two months. Sylvia 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.279 also faced bullying and harassment at school and in the 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.760 neighborhood as as well. The other children and their neighbors 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.560 didn't like her wearing girls clothing, and they didn't like 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:10.760 her effeminine mannerisms. Feeling lonely, isolated, and desperately at odds 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.240 with everyone around her, Sylvia left home at age eleven. 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:16.599 The straw that really broke the camel's back was seeing 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.080 how others treatment of her was affecting her grandmother. Even 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:24.000 though their relationship was often contentious and strained and even violent, 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:27.320 Sylvia did not like seeing her grandmother suffer over the 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:31.560 way people talked about her. After she ran away, Sylvia 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.040 went to forty two Street in New York City, which 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.839 was a haven for cross dressers and street walkers. She 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.039 had no other means to support herself, and so she 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:41.960 turned to sex work. And I want to make it 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:43.880 clear that there are people who choose to go into 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.479 sex work, but at this time Sylvia was eleven and 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.359 she had no other options. The area's drag queens pretty 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.520 much adopted her, and they're the ones who gave her 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:56.839 the name Sylvia. Sylvia was arrested frequently and her grandmother 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.120 would come and bail her out. A few days shy 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.160 of Sylvia's eighteenth birthday, she went to the Stonewall In 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.240 for the first time, and this was June twenty, nineteen 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:10.520 sixty nine. The Stonewall End was, like many of New 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.279 York's bars that catered to the gay community at the time, 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.120 owned by the Mafia. Homosexuality was a crime, and so 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.640 was cross dressing, so pretty much the only people who 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.920 were willing to operate businesses that catered to this demographic 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:27.640 were also themselves criminals. Gay bars were rated on a 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:31.840 regular basis. Standard operating procedure was that the police would 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.000 come in, they would make arrests and confiscations. They would 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.479 then collect a payoff, and then they would leave and 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:40.880 padlock the door behind them. Not long after the police 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.280 had gone, members of the mafia would come by cut 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.760 the padlock off. They would then restock the alcohol supply 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:50.000 and business would start right back up. So for the 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:52.520 people who didn't wind up getting arrested, it was more 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.520 of a hassle and an interruption to their evening's revelry 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.359 than anything else. For people who did get arrested, it 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.839 could be way way harder, and not just for the 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:05.240 fact that they were taken to jail, but often in 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:09.960 jail they were then taunted and sometimes beaten and sometimes 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:14.400 assaulted by other people who were in the jail. On June, 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.360 when the police came in, most of the patrons went 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.400 to the park across the street to wait, and they 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.120 were tired of being hassled. A lot of people say 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:24.800 that this was because it was the same week that 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:29.880 Judy Garland died, and that doesn't seem through the oral 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:34.160 histories to actually add up necessarily, but it's more a 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.040 point a coincidence than to cause an effect situation. Right 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.280 at some point, somebody started throwing coins at the police officers, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.000 yelling things like here's your payoff, come get some more, 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:51.040 and then things started to escalate. People started throwing bottles 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:55.200 and Molotov cocktails. Sylvia is widely cited as the first 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.120 to do this, but near the end of her life 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:00.280 she really worked to try to dispel this idea, saying 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:02.680 that she was in fact the second to throw a bottle. 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.880 Soon the police were pinned down inside the bar with 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:11.200 the protesters outside, and the riot went on until reinforcements 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.840 arrived and dispersed the crowd. The Stonewall ryot wasn't remotely 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.480 the first event in the modern gay rights movement. It 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.040 wasn't even the first riot in an establishment that was 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:25.880 frequented by LGBT people. An early earlier example was a 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.480 riot at Cooper's Donuts in Los Angeles in X five, 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.720 and in that event, drag queens and gay men, many 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.240 of them black or Latino, fought back against police, first 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.079 by throwing donuts, which sounds sort of funny, and then 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.600 with hand to hand fighting much less funny. Uh. In 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:45.800 San Francisco, a picket protest among LGBT protesters turned into 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.520 a riot at Compton's Cafeteria in nineteen sixty six. But 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.199 Stonewall really did act as a sort of tipping point 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:57.920 and a rallying cry, definitely the most famous today. So 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.720 there are several things about the riots and lvia's presence 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:04.120 there that are caused for debate today. One is just 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:06.679 how much of the Stonewell Ins clientele was made up 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:10.440 of cross stressers and transgender people. Now, as we mentioned before, 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.440 the term transgender had not really been coined at this 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.240 point in history, but when it was coined about ten 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.800 years later, a lot of the people who would identified 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:24.840 as cross stressors or as transvestites at the time then 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.600 went on to identify as transgender. So we're gonna keep 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:32.960 talking about both cross stressers and transgender people both for 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.160 the rest of the episode, because there are two different things. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.839 Cross stressing is about the clothes you have on and 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.560 transgender is about your gender expression, so your expression of 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:46.880 the gender that you uh that you are inwardly versus 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:50.120 the clothes that you have on your body. In Sylvia's 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.360 own words, cross stressers could only get and if they 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.080 knew somebody, because cross stressors were really frequently targeted by 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.679 the police, so a lot of businesses felt like it 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:00.640 was too much of a hassle to deal with them. 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:04.439 Other people have characterized the Stonewell in as a haven 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.840 for cross jessers and for transgender people, and there are 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:12.400 reputable historians on both sides. Another bone of contention is 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:17.640 actually whether Sylvia herself was even there. She says she was, uh, 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:20.080 And of course she's often credited with being the first 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:23.840 bottle thrower, but historians have not been able to corroborate 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:28.320 her presence there through eyewitness accounts. In the end, it 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.079 doesn't necessarily matter how many transgender patrons the Stonewell in 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:35.840 had or whether Sylvia was actually there that night. What 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.520 does matter is that Sylvia and the rest of the 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:44.120 cross dressing and transgender community became vocal, aggressive campaigners for 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.520 the rights of game and lesbians, bisexuals, and all manner 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:51.360 of people who just didn't conform to gender norms. They were, 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.120 in many ways the people who were the most visibly 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.679 on the forefront of the fight for equality and for 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.240 civil rights. And we're going to talk more about what 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.840 happened after Stonewall, right after a word from our sponsor. 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.560 If that is cool with Tracy, it is. Sylvia Rivera 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.199 had already been active in racial equality and anti war 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.800 causes before the Stonewall riot, and after the riot she 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.720 immediately passionately turned her attention to the growing movement for 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:22.480 gay rights to gay rights organizations formed in New York 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:24.520 in the wake of the riot. That was the Gay 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.880 Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front, and Sylvia was 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.400 active in both of those groups as part of the 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:34.920 Gay Activists Alliance. Sylvia petitioned the city of New York 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:38.200 for an anti discrimination bill, and she was arrested while 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.160 trying to get signatures. When she appeared before the judge, 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.080 he immediately let her go. He recognized that with all 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.079 of the social turmoil that was going on in the 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.079 United States at that point, it would be a really 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.840 unwise pr move for him to jail someone who was 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:56.040 getting signatures for a petition. Sylvia also testified before the 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.120 city Council to try to get the bill passed. However, 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.240 as the bill was being negotiated, others in the gay 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:06.080 community agreed to drop protections for cross dressers from the 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.040 bill in the hope that it would be more likely 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.640 to pass. Sylvia and many of the other cross dressing 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.080 and transgender citizens of New York felt really deeply betrayed 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.960 by this. They had been working, campaigning and getting arrested 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.720 and sometimes facing abuse and violence and sexual assault in 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:25.880 jail once they had been arrested fighting for these causes, 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.360 and at this point it felt like they had done 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:30.600 this for a cause that had then turned their back 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:34.240 on them. And it didn't help that the bill minus 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:38.680 discrimination protections for gender expression did not actually pass until 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:42.160 fifteen years later, so that would have been ninet So 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.120 this concession really in the end was not much of 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:49.640 a help along the way. The Gay Activists Alliance specifically 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:55.560 dropped rights for the cross dressing communities from its mission entirely. Consequently, 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:59.400 after being excluded from other gay rights organizations, Sylvia and 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.760 her long time friend Marcia P. Johnson co founded the 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:07.079 Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries or STAR in the fall of 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:11.280 nineteen seventy. Essentially, the cross dressing and transgender community had 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.760 begun to feel excluded by other gay and lesbian rights organizations, 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.160 and so they formed their own. As a side note 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.040 to a lot of people today, the word transvestite has 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:25.240 connotations that are offensive, so people a lot of people 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.440 prefer the word cross stressor but at the time it 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:29.480 was a word that they were using to talk about 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:34.200 themselves frequently. Yeah, you also hear drag, which is in there, 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:36.920 and they can get a little fuzzy, and they're still 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.440 ongoing debate over you know, terminology and who should use 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:45.400 what to some degree that's still being worked out. Yes, so, uh, 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:47.599 we're not at all using those terms to be disrespectful, 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.000 but because that's those are the words that Sylvia and 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:54.080 Marcia were using to describe themselves. So Sylvia and Marcia's 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.240 next step was to start what was known as Star House, 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:00.600 and this was an outreach effort for the so called queens. 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.880 These were young homeless gay youth, many of whom later 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.360 went on to identify as transgender, and many of whom 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:12.120 were also people of color. And they originally operated Starhouse 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:14.880 out of the back of a truck, and then they 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.160 started renting a building at two thirteen et Second Street 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.640 and they fixed that up and there they provided shelter, food, 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:25.720 and guidance for homeless transgender youth and Sylvia and Marcia 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.960 really became mother figures for these kids. They had a 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:31.520 dance to try to raise some money to fund their operation, 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.640 but for the most part, Sylvia and Marcia kept the 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.800 place running by doing sex work. They tried to protect 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:39.720 all of the young people who were in their care 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.720 from being involved in the sex trade at all. However, 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.240 many of the youth wound up helping Star Houses efforts 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:51.120 by stealing food and eventually, uh, you know, this is 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:54.960 not really a workable business model. So Starhouse was evicted 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:57.880 from the property for non payment of rent, and before 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.760 they left, they took the refrigerator and they destroyed all 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.320 of the improvements that they made in the building out 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:07.440 of a sort of turnabout is fair play mindset, And 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:09.560 I feel like we should point out that the reason 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.120 that they were having to turn to stealing and sex 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:14.880 work to fund their operations is because their entire lives 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.720 at this point were not only illegal, but also specifically 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.600 targeted by the police and other people for harassment. So 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:24.520 that was sort of what it had come to by 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:28.080 being excluded from so many other social organizations that were 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.560 working to help homeless people and others in New York. Yeah, 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.160 it certainly was not like, oh, we don't want to 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.960 pursue legitimate means of gaining money. They just did not 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:41.840 have opportunities to do so, right, and that continues to 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.200 be a problem in a lot of areas today. Throughout 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.720 this time, Sylvia was also active in other radical organizations 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:51.800 as well, including the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:57.360 which is a Puerto Rican nationalist activism group. In nine three, 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.040 Sylvia was supposed to speak at Christopher's Street Liberation Day, 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.960 which was a festival to commemorate the anniversary of the 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:08.560 Stonewall Riots. However, radical feminists tried to keep Sylvia from 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.320 the stage because they viewed her wearing women's clothing as sexist. 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:17.320 In particular, activist Gino Leary, a former nun and lesbian feminist, 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:22.160 spoke out against Sylvia taking part. Sylvia's response was to 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:25.520 physically grab the microphone and to talk anyway, with a 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:29.280 lot of vigor and profanity behind her words. Um. She 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:33.120 spoke very candidly and angrily about how the gay community 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.440 was benefiting from the cross stressors work while simultaneously excluding 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.040 them from their successes as your payment. I do want 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.920 to note that Gino Leary went on to soften her 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:47.480 views about cross stressors and transgender people later in her life. 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:49.920 I don't want to paint her as a terrible person 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:54.640 who went around oppressing other people. She she did later 0:16:54.720 --> 0:17:00.240 on express embarrassment and shame that she had really sickly 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.560 kicked people who were already down. Yeah, and the drag 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:05.920 queens that were supposed to perform at this rally were 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:11.160 also barred from performing. After this incident, Sylvia moved to Terrytown, 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:13.960 New York and lived with a boyfriend. Since she was 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.679 no longer in the city, she became less prominent in 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:19.320 its civil rights and gay rights efforts, but she did 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.560 make her way back every year for the parades and 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:25.480 festivals that commemorated the end of the Stonewall Riot. In 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:29.320 the interim, she led a relatively quiet life. She mostly 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:33.440 worked food service jobs for a while, but eventually, unfortunately, 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:37.880 she began abusing drugs again and wound up homeless, and 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.120 journalists who were working to chronicle the gay rights movements 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.960 earlier years and transgender people's contribution to the gay rights 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.600 movement found her living on the streets in New York 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:52.040 in the early nine nineties. This actually marked her return 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:54.520 to activism and to the public eye, which we'll talk 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.080 about after another brief ad break. It's tricky to talk 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:00.000 about some of the issues that are in today's episod 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:03.399 because the terminology that we used to talk about it today, 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:08.280 some of it was coined basically halfway through Sylvia Rivera's life. 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:14.400 It's also tricky to talk about Sylvia Rivera's identity, specifically UH, 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.600 because she really really resisted the idea of labels for 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:19.479 a lot of her life. She referred to herself as 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:21.960 a transvestite, and as we said earlier, that's the word 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.520 that a lot of people don't prefer to be used anymore. 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:28.679 The term transgender came around about halfway through her life, 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:32.399 but she wasn't totally comfortable calling herself that. Towards the 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:34.639 end of her life, she said quote, I'm tired of 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:37.639 being labeled. I don't even like the label transgender. I 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:40.320 just want to be who I am. I'm living the 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.480 way Sylvia wants to live. But despite her lack of 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.720 affinity for labels, Sylvia was undoubtedly an advocate for rights 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.440 and protections for transgender people throughout the last ten years 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:54.880 or show of her life. We talked earlier about Sylvia 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:59.480 founding the organization Star with Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha's body 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:03.560 was actually found in the Hudson River in Nineteo. Police 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:06.840 originally said that it was a suicide, but they eventually 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.040 opened a homicide investigation. And when I say eventually, I 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:12.879 mean two decades later. At the time of her death, 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.639 Sylvia and other friends of Marsha's had said that she 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.680 was not suicidal and that they had witnessed her being 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:22.040 harassed by someone near where her body was found shortly 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:26.480 before her death. In nine Sylvia was asked to lead 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.320 the twenty fifth anniversary Stonewall March. That same year, she 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.679 advocated for Martin Duberman's publishers to translate his LGBT history 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:39.199 book Stonewall into Spanish, but according to her, she was 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.120 told it would not sell well in quote third world countries. 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:46.520 In Latin countries and her last years, she and her 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.720 partner Julia Murray lived and work at a place called 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.480 Transy House. This is a collective and shelter for transgender 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:58.680 youth and they joined this collective in nine in Sylvia 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.399 was arrested during m O real for Matthew Shepherd in 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.199 New York. So if you are not familiar with his story, 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.880 Matthew Shepherd was a student at the University of Wyoming 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.960 at Laramie who was tortured, tied to a fence post, 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:13.480 and left to die as part of an anti gay 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.000 hate crime. He wound up dying of his injuries a 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.440 few days after he was found tied to the fence post. 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.879 According to Sylvia's own account, a police officer basically spread 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.720 the word to arrest her first because she was known 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:30.320 for being very vocal at these kinds of demonstrations. In 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.879 Sylvia spoke at the World Pride rally in Rome. In 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:39.000 two thousand, another transwoman named Amanda Milan was stabbed in 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:44.080 the neck and killed on street. Sylvia organized a series 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.200 of rallies and protests surrounding her death and the trial 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:51.280 of her killers. Sylvia continued to be really vocal about 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.120 the schism between the gay community and the trans community 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:56.640 in the years before her death, and about a year 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.800 before she died, at a talk given before the Latino 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.040 Amen of New York, she said, yes, we can adopt children. 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:05.280 All well and good, that's fine. I would love to 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.120 have children. I would love to marry my lover over there, 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:11.760 she pointed to Julia Murray. But for political reasons, I 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:13.840 will not do it, because I don't feel that I 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:16.680 have to fit in that closet of normal straight society 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:21.119 which the gay mainstream is going towards. In the same speech, 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.520 she described the trans community's participation in the gay rights 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:28.960 movement this way quote. We were determined that evening, that evening, 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.399 being the night at the Stonewall riots, that we were 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:34.440 going to be a liberated, free community, which we did 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:38.440 acquire that Actually, I'll change the WII you have acquired 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:42.640 your liberation, your freedom. From that night, myself, I've got 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.679 expletive deleted, just like I had back then. But I 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.680 still struggle, and I still continue the struggle. I will 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:51.040 struggle till the day I die. And my main struggle 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:53.640 right now is that my community will seek the rights 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.520 that are justly ours. In the last year of her life, 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:01.680 Sylvia campaigned for New York Sexual or Ination Non Discrimination Act, 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.880 which is also referred to as SUNDA, and that act 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.800 prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:14.320 orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, credit, and the 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.960 exercise of civil rights. It includes protections for transgender people. 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:22.520 Sylvia was not exaggerating when she said that she was 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:24.959 going to work until she died for this. Her last 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:28.520 meeting about SANDA, when she met with city officials for 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:32.160 the last time, took place in a hospital bed when 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:35.119 she was an in stage liver disease and in great pain. 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:39.280 She died on February nineteenth, two thousand two, of liver 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:43.000 disease at the age of fifty one. SANDA was signed 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:46.760 into law on December seventeenth of that same year. On 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:49.720 November fourteenth of two thousand and five, the City of 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:52.879 New York named the corner of Christopher and Hudson Streets 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:57.679 in the West Village Sylvia Rivera Way. Today, the Sylvia 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.320 Rivera Food Pantry, which is under the auspice, is of 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.760 the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, which serves the 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:06.679 working poor as well as people with HIV through a 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:10.960 specialized pantry program that's designed for people on anti retroviral 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:14.720 therapies UH. These are higher in protein and easy to prepare. 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:19.560 It also provides nutritional information and kind of meal guidance 0:23:19.720 --> 0:23:24.040 for all of the populations that it serves. Sylvia's Place 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.160