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Speaker 1: Pushkin, But I was so happy to be fighting back

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Speaker 1: in the standing up for who I was. We were happy.

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Speaker 1: It probably was the happiest riot in the history of America.

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Speaker 1: For a minute, I just stood there. I just stood

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Speaker 1: and took it all in, and I knew something was

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Speaker 1: changing from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show

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Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.

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Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's episode, where we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising,

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Speaker 1: an iconic moment in the history of the rights of

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Speaker 1: gay and lesbian people in the United States. It's also

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Speaker 1: an opportunity for reflecting on the universe that existed at

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Speaker 1: the time of Stonewall, on government surveillance and oppression of

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Speaker 1: gay and lesbian and transgender people, and on the changes

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Speaker 1: that have been wrought over the last half century, both

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Speaker 1: the changes that have made things so much better for

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Speaker 1: many gay and lesbian people and the failures to change

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Speaker 1: that continue to affect many many people in various areas

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Speaker 1: of our lives. We'll start by hearing from Mark Seagull,

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Speaker 1: a Stonewall veteran from Philadelphia. When I was eighteen. In

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, LGBT people were invisible. We weren't on TV,

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Speaker 1: we weren't on radio. We were there was no such

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Speaker 1: thing as a podcast. So growing up as an eighteen

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Speaker 1: year old in Philadelphia City at one point six million,

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Speaker 1: I literally thought I was the only gay person there. So,

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Speaker 1: since you knew, you couldn't ask people about who you were,

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Speaker 1: since it was something that was only talked about in

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Speaker 1: whispers about, the only place you could do that was

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Speaker 1: at the library, where you might, if you were lucky,

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Speaker 1: find five books, and each of those books might tell

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Speaker 1: you that you were immoral, illegal, and mentally incompetent. And

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Speaker 1: I didn't feel like that was me, and I wanted

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Speaker 1: to escape that phil Adelphia invisibility. So I went where

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Speaker 1: I thought there were other gay people at eighteen years old,

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Speaker 1: which was New York. And I moved to New York

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Speaker 1: on May tenth, nineteen sixty nine, a date which I

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Speaker 1: will always remember because to me, that representative freedom and

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Speaker 1: for the first day I could begin to be myself.

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Speaker 1: When you went to New York at that point, there

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Speaker 1: were no neon signs which said where there's a gay area,

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Speaker 1: because even in New York in nineteen sixty nine, it

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Speaker 1: was illegal to be gay, and gay people could not

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Speaker 1: legally congregate. Gay people could not go into a bar

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Speaker 1: and ask for a drink. A bar that served non

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Speaker 1: homosexuals would lose its liquor license. So one of the

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Speaker 1: few places you could do that in was an illegal

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Speaker 1: bar called the Stonewall. And in the Stonewall you could

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Speaker 1: be yourself. It was a dingy, illegal bar which served

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Speaker 1: water down drinks, but when you went inside, you could

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Speaker 1: be yourself. And that was the magic of Stonewall. On

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Speaker 1: June twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, the first day of

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Speaker 1: the Stonewall Rising, Mark had only been in New York

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Speaker 1: for about seven weeks. In New York at the time,

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Speaker 1: it was relatively a regular thing for the police to

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Speaker 1: come in and raid the Stonewall. I didn't know that

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Speaker 1: that night because for me eighteen, I had never been

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Speaker 1: in a ray before, and so when the police came in,

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Speaker 1: I was sort of shocked and terrified to be honest.

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Speaker 1: But what usually happened, I found out later, was they

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Speaker 1: would come in, take their corruption money and just leave.

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Speaker 1: But that night was unusual in the fact that they

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Speaker 1: barged him, threw people against the wall, roughed them up

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Speaker 1: a little, hurled every kind of insult you can imagine us,

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Speaker 1: which we've heard our entire lives. And then what shocked

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Speaker 1: me the most was they went to people who looked

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Speaker 1: like they were prosperous or successful and literally asked them

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Speaker 1: to take out their wallets and took the money from

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Speaker 1: those wallets and put it in their pockets. That I

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Speaker 1: think showed me how little they disregarded us, that we

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Speaker 1: meant nothing to them. This was the police stealing and

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Speaker 1: what are we to do? Call the police? They were

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Speaker 1: the police. And then slowly but surely they allowed us

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Speaker 1: to leave the bar by guarding us, and we didn't disperse.

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Speaker 1: And the police they got their corruption money, They did

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Speaker 1: what they wanted to do, and they were ready to leave.

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Speaker 1: Every time they opened that door, we wouldn't leave. We

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Speaker 1: eventually started throwing stones, cans, or what anything we could

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Speaker 1: find on the street at those doors, and the police

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Speaker 1: literally were afraid to open the door. They were imprisoned

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Speaker 1: inside stone wall. It is the first time that we

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Speaker 1: imprisoned our oppressors. That's the reason why it's called a riot,

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Speaker 1: and that's the reason why it's history is for the

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Speaker 1: first time, we fought back as a people. As for

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Speaker 1: me standing there, you know, I felt full of adrenaline.

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Speaker 1: While I was terrified inside the bar, Once I got

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Speaker 1: outside the bar, my attitude, mind, body all changed. It

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Speaker 1: became super charged, full of adrenaline and very joyous. But

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Speaker 1: I was so happy to be fighting back and the

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Speaker 1: standing up for who I was. And I'm sure everybody

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Speaker 1: who was there felt the same exact way. We were happy.

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Speaker 1: It probably was the happiest riot in the history of

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Speaker 1: American because we were fighting back for the first time.

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Speaker 1: There was just a scene of joy. I'm sure the

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Speaker 1: police didn't feel that way. I think they were terrified.

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Speaker 1: They had never seen anything like that. They'd always thought

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Speaker 1: they could do whatever they wanted to us. And this

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Speaker 1: went on for hours, and I literally at one point

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Speaker 1: was standing across the street watching the scene in front

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Speaker 1: of me, and I remember thinking that was gonna be

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Speaker 1: what I was gonna do with the rest of my life.

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Speaker 1: And at that time, there was no term called gay activist,

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Speaker 1: so I didn't know what the hell I was going

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Speaker 1: to be. I just knew that's what I was going

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Speaker 1: to do, and I also thought i'd be poor for

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Speaker 1: the rest of my life because getting paid to be

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Speaker 1: a professional gay activist. If there was no salary attached

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Speaker 1: to it, but it was my passion, then it's my

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Speaker 1: passion now. Mark Seagull went on to become the founder

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Speaker 1: and publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News and the president

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Speaker 1: of the National Gay Newspaper Guild. Another person whose life

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Speaker 1: was deeply affected by Stonewall is Joan Nessel. Joan is

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Speaker 1: a truly fascinating person. Born in nineteen forty, she protested

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Speaker 1: against the activities of the House An American Affairs Committee.

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Speaker 1: She became an activist, ultimately joining a wide range of

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Speaker 1: lesbian and gay rights groups. She became a writer, a professor.

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Speaker 1: She founded the Lesbian and Herstory Archives, and she has

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Speaker 1: continued to teach and think about questions of liberation and

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Speaker 1: the erotics of desire from the time of Stonewall very

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Speaker 1: much up to the present. She joined us all the

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Speaker 1: way from Australia. Hello, Hi, Joan, Hi, It's Noah Feldman.

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Speaker 1: How are you okay? It's an early dark morning here

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Speaker 1: in Melvern, Australia. So I hope I have a flow

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Speaker 1: of words. I'm sure you will. Thank you so much

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Speaker 1: for joining us. One of the reasons that we wanted

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Speaker 1: to have this conversation with you is that we're all

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Speaker 1: looking back fifty years later on the Stone Wall uprising

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Speaker 1: and trying to understand its context. It's meaning what it

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Speaker 1: meant to the people who were there in it. And

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Speaker 1: I wonder if you would start by helping us to

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Speaker 1: just set the stage for Greenwich Village in the late

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. As a lesbian person making your way there,

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Speaker 1: what was it like for you? Let me start ten

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Speaker 1: years earlier, because all these beginnings have befos. When I

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Speaker 1: was seventeen, I was just a desiring young woman looking

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Speaker 1: for the lesbian touch, and that's what drove me to

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Speaker 1: follow women who look like lesbians. We're talking nineteen fifty eight,

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Speaker 1: so in Greenwich Village, right down the streets to see

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Speaker 1: where they were going. It was this whole underworld that

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Speaker 1: I was desperate to be a part of. And you

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Speaker 1: were from the Bronx. So how did you know to

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Speaker 1: go down to Greenite Village. Davian cultures have a way

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Speaker 1: of finding who needs them, and the village was it

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Speaker 1: seems to me. As soon as I knew there was

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Speaker 1: another place outside of the Bronx, was known as a

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Speaker 1: place for queer people. And that I want to say

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Speaker 1: that it was a very real word. That two words

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Speaker 1: freak and queer, which is what end in my head

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Speaker 1: as I entered this world. So I walked into a place.

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Speaker 1: There was a place called the Sea Colony and it

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Speaker 1: became part of me for ten years. So yeah, the

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Speaker 1: Sea Connie was also in the West Village, just a

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Speaker 1: short walk from from where where the stonewall in is. Yes,

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Speaker 1: tell us about the Sea Connie. So all our bars

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Speaker 1: were policed and we were criminals a minute we entered

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Speaker 1: that those doors. So one way there was things called

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Speaker 1: the vice Squad, and the vice Squad patrolled queer i'll

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Speaker 1: use meeting places. And one way they did it was

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Speaker 1: there was a phenomena called the bathroom line. And what

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Speaker 1: this was There was a line for all these lesbian

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Speaker 1: women drinking a lot of beer, you know, to go

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Speaker 1: to the bathroom, as simple as that. But because we

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Speaker 1: were considered criminal, our bathroom habits had to be policed,

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Speaker 1: meaning only one woman at a time was allowed into

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Speaker 1: the bathroom and to control that behavior. Now, this is

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Speaker 1: all done from the bar owners cooperating with the Vice

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Speaker 1: squad police. So they could keep the bar open. There

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Speaker 1: was a butch woman that i've whose job it was

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Speaker 1: to give us our allotted amount of toilet paper. And

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Speaker 1: why I understand the why the one person why the

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Speaker 1: allotment of toilet paper, because that was the way to

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Speaker 1: control You couldn't get past her us to inform us

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Speaker 1: that our behavior was being watched and being controlled. So

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Speaker 1: it became part of our I called it a line act.

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Speaker 1: We flirted on that line. We knew it awaited all

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Speaker 1: of us. I had a double consciousness on that line,

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Speaker 1: and maybe many others did two that this was the

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Speaker 1: state and the state intruded on us. Is also part

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Speaker 1: of the Stonewall time was that we knew and we

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Speaker 1: dressed to go to the bar, that we had to

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Speaker 1: put on three pieces of women's clothing or we could

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Speaker 1: be arrested for transvestism. We couldn't. We weren't allowed to dance,

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Speaker 1: we would be arrested for indecent behavior. So the line

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Speaker 1: was part of it. It lived in my mind as

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Speaker 1: the powers of the state to control our bodies. So

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Speaker 1: part of the Stone Wall story is desire, and that

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Speaker 1: often does not get talked about. It's what propelled me

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Speaker 1: to take on the state. In those bars, every Saturday night,

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Speaker 1: the police, the same cop would come in. We were

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Speaker 1: allowed to dance in a small back room. The front

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Speaker 1: room was for straight people who wanted to come and

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Speaker 1: look at the queers, and they'd sit at tables. But

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Speaker 1: the back room was where we could dance women together,

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Speaker 1: and it had a red light, and that was our

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Speaker 1: wanting to sit down and not touch each other because

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Speaker 1: the police, the same cop was coming in for his payoffs,

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Speaker 1: and he'd come into the back room. He'd look us over.

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Speaker 1: He had a wad of bills in his hand, and

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Speaker 1: invariably he would pick some butchwoman who was with a

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Speaker 1: very attractive fam that would enrage them and humiliate her.

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Speaker 1: I witnessed one night when a butcheroman was thrown up

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Speaker 1: against the wall of the sea colony outside, and this

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Speaker 1: cop made her tack her pinstone to show her that

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Speaker 1: she wasn't really a man. You describe a very movingly

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Speaker 1: the dance of desire and then the constant surveillance of

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Speaker 1: the state, And you also spoke very convincingly about the

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Speaker 1: thought that this was going to break, that there would

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Speaker 1: be resistance. Can you describe to us what it was

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Speaker 1: like when you you were outside the Sea Colony, you

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Speaker 1: heard that something had happened the day before at Stonewall.

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Speaker 1: You you went down to Waverley Place, What did you see?

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Speaker 1: What was the scene? Like, Yes, I'm walking from my

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Speaker 1: um my tenement apartment apartment from the East Village to

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Speaker 1: the West Village to get to my bar the Sea Colony.

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Speaker 1: It's warm. I always remember the heat, like the heat

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Speaker 1: of the body, but this was the heat of us

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Speaker 1: the night. And as we approached um where Stonewall was,

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Speaker 1: and it was it's a big thoroughfare, everything changed. It

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Speaker 1: was like I've never been in a moment of of

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Speaker 1: of conflict, of you know, armed conflict, but that's what

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Speaker 1: it seemed like. There were flashing lights, and there were

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Speaker 1: um people felt like hundreds of people just running and

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Speaker 1: milling around, and there were shouts of resistance, and there

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Speaker 1: was energy and there, but there was also fear because

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Speaker 1: I wasn't quite sure what was happening. And for a minute,

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Speaker 1: I just stood there. I just stood and took it

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Speaker 1: all in and I knew something was changing. And what

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Speaker 1: I saw in the street that night, the second night

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Speaker 1: after Stonewall, was the power of a people's descent the

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Speaker 1: refusal to allow their bodies to be policed without respect

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Speaker 1: for their being, all their desire. And I keep emphasizing sexuality.

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Speaker 1: That was what drove me, as a seventeen year old

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Speaker 1: be arrested any minute for doing a simple thing like

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Speaker 1: touching another woman. But I wanted to be where my body,

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Speaker 1: as any young person, could experience its own erotics. And

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Speaker 1: so that was a public face of a humiliated erotics.

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Speaker 1: I would say that was in the street that night.

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Speaker 1: And then also it was also the courage of those

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Speaker 1: who had the least doing the most. And this is

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Speaker 1: what struck me in my own boss because my bar

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Speaker 1: was a working class bar, and I say it became

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Speaker 1: our community. We go there every weekend, so we knew everybody,

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Speaker 1: and we probably it was the one place we all met.

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Speaker 1: So there were passing women, women who others thought were men,

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Speaker 1: who worked as taxi drivers, worked at stock clerks who

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Speaker 1: did the things at men usually kinds of jobs. There

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Speaker 1: were sex workers. It was a huge meeting place of pariahs.

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Speaker 1: Is the word, and that is the word that has

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Speaker 1: been haunting me both. You know, I'm a working class

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Speaker 1: girl who lived on ideas and Hannah Arrant's idea of

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Speaker 1: the pariet. I think that's part of what's happened at Stonewall.

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Speaker 1: It's when the pariats taking everything with pride that made

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Speaker 1: them and also what the society has judged, and doing

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Speaker 1: something different with that heritage. And there was an exuberance.

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Speaker 1: There's an exuberance once without nothing, you make love in

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Speaker 1: the face of the state. And do you think that

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Speaker 1: do you think that that that mode of resistance that

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Speaker 1: you're describing gave a certain strength or a certain beauty,

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Speaker 1: or a certain form of resistance that's actually difficult for

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Speaker 1: later generations to recapture or to reimagine, because you know,

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Speaker 1: for later generations there's of course still a homophobia, they're

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Speaker 1: still biased, they're still transphobia. None of those things has disappeared.

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Speaker 1: But typically, and certainly in Greenwich Village, but typically elsewhere

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Speaker 1: in the United States too, it's less likely that the

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Speaker 1: state would be the primary source of surveillance, less likely

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Speaker 1: that the state would be the primary source of force

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Speaker 1: or violence. So there's been in that degree something some

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Speaker 1: things have begun to change significantly. I speak a lot

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Speaker 1: with young people and they ask me the same question.

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Speaker 1: All they used to and they learned, and they say, oh,

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Speaker 1: I wish i'd come out when you did. It was

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Speaker 1: so you know, you had to. It was so exciting.

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Speaker 1: And I look at them, I say, don't you worry.

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Speaker 1: Your times will give you your stonewall. And that is happening.

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Speaker 1: My main concern is the rise of the fascistic right.

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Speaker 1: These privileges that we're given, all these so called recognitions,

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Speaker 1: one can be taken back very quickly, as Trump and

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Speaker 1: his ilk unraveled democratic institutions. But look look at the contrast.

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Speaker 1: I'm so in ninety fifty, yet I'm in a bar

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Speaker 1: where every part of me is policed. But I felt

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Speaker 1: so alive. I knew, I knew I wasn't going to

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Speaker 1: take that. I knew nothing they could offer me was

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Speaker 1: worth the culture we were creating under such dorists. And now,

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Speaker 1: in one of the most obscene political moments in American history,

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Speaker 1: queer people are being in a way celebrated. New York

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Speaker 1: is flowing with queer love, and that's wonderful in some ways.

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Speaker 1: And I see how it moves the young people, and

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Speaker 1: I see all of that, But the larger context, the

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Speaker 1: Force movement the shutting of doors to migrants. This is

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Speaker 1: all part of my queer self. Now, the pariah is

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Speaker 1: always aware of when the door is shut of who

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Speaker 1: becomes the new face of the unwanted. People will say, oh,

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Speaker 1: you must be so happy, You must be so happy

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Speaker 1: being a gay person. You know you don't have to

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Speaker 1: take your allotted amount of toilet pill. First of all,

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Speaker 1: there is still many who are metaphorically, and secondly, there

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Speaker 1: are new Humanity didn't doesn't end with a queer positioning

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Speaker 1: in one time, in one place. Often there are there

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Speaker 1: are what I hear are echoes or hints in your

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Speaker 1: In your analysis of you spoke of working class consciousness.

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Speaker 1: You spoke of identification across groups. And I wondered whether

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Speaker 1: at any of these times that we've spoken about you

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Speaker 1: self identified as a socialist or a Marxist store, And

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Speaker 1: I wonder how that, how do you think about the

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Speaker 1: interaction between that identity and your your other identities. Well,

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Speaker 1: they're all of a piece, are past or like a rope.

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Speaker 1: But I my beginning point, Well, the women who stood

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Speaker 1: beside me, and some were passing women, so they were

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Speaker 1: would be part of it, a trance community, some with

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Speaker 1: sex workers, and that's always been an important community to me.

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Speaker 1: It was for them. Everything I did, in a way

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Speaker 1: was for them. They touched my young woman's body. They

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Speaker 1: were the first who gave me that deep pleasure. And

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Speaker 1: but more than that, more than that, they gave me

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Speaker 1: a narrative of courage with bruises, with hardship, with economic deprivation.

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Speaker 1: But they tried so fullheartedly to create a life for themselves.

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Speaker 1: So I feel honored. I feel honored, and I feel

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Speaker 1: honored to know the young people now who are trying

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Speaker 1: to do the same in Trump America. Joan, thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for taking us to the Sea Colony and

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Speaker 1: to Stonewall, and to the entire world of people for

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Speaker 1: whom you've worked and in whose honor you've described what

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Speaker 1: you've been doing. Thank you. It's an extraordinary honor for

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Speaker 1: me to have the chance to talk to you, and

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Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to you for sharing your stories with us.

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Speaker 1: Oh I'm just sitting here pishing, But that's okay too.

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Speaker 1: That's a good part of life as well. You've you've

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Speaker 1: earned that. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's

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Speaker 1: a privilege and fascinating to hear from people like Joan

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Speaker 1: Nessel and Mark Siegel, who both lived in such an

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Speaker 1: immediate and powerful way a series of crucial historical moments

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Speaker 1: a whole long, complicated period of historical evolution. It's made

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Speaker 1: me reflect on a lot of things. Among other things,

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Speaker 1: it makes me reflect on my extraordinary and lucky privilege

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Speaker 1: as a straight, white CIS gender man with his own

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Speaker 1: podcast embarrassingly enough, who gets to talk to people who

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Speaker 1: are fascinating, to people who have confronted real fundamental challenges,

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Speaker 1: the Begger, the imagination when they compare to anything that

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Speaker 1: I've encountered in my life. It also makes me think

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Speaker 1: going forward about how we should think about the legacy

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Speaker 1: of civil rights struggles like the gain lesbian rights struggle

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Speaker 1: that has followed Stonewall. Should we think of those struggles

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Speaker 1: as models of what our society can achieve. Should we

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Speaker 1: congratulate ourselves on what we've done and try to use

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Speaker 1: that self congratulation to extend new rights to other vulnerable

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Speaker 1: people like trans people. Well, that is part of it.

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Speaker 1: I think if we don't tell ourselves these stories of success,

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Speaker 1: we will give up trying, We will become pessimistic, we

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Speaker 1: won't make the effort the next time we need some

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Speaker 1: myths of great success in civil rights to take us forward.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, the great danger of that kind

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Speaker 1: of self satisfied self gratulation, especially from people like me

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Speaker 1: who come from privilege, is to say, look, how well

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Speaker 1: we've done. We have extended rights to lots of people.

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Speaker 1: That has the effect of allowing us to be blind

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Speaker 1: to continuing violations of rights, to ongoing forms of discrimination,

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Speaker 1: to structural discrimination that comes from the economy, not only

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Speaker 1: from the government but also from private sector entities, and

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Speaker 1: to forms of exclusion that sometimes just pass by the

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Speaker 1: consciousness of people who can get away with that, avoiding

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Speaker 1: the consciousness of people who in fact suffer. So we

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Speaker 1: need both. We need to pat ourselves on the back

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Speaker 1: just a little bit in order to have encouragement for

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Speaker 1: the future. But we also need to keep our eyes open.

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Speaker 1: We need to make sure that when the next civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement begins, as many have, that it doesn't take

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Speaker 1: fifty years for us to say, there you go, something

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Speaker 1: significant has been accomplished. Deep Background is brought to you

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Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Genecott, with engineering

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Speaker 1: by Jason Gambrel and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon.

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Speaker 1: Our theme music is composed by Luis Gera special thanks

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Speaker 1: to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel.

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Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at

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Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. This is deep background