Speaker 1: Pushkin, But I was so happy to be fighting back
Speaker 1: in the standing up for who I was. We were happy.
Speaker 1: It probably was the happiest riot in the history of America.
Speaker 1: For a minute, I just stood there. I just stood
Speaker 1: and took it all in, and I knew something was
Speaker 1: changing from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's episode, where we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising,
Speaker 1: an iconic moment in the history of the rights of
Speaker 1: gay and lesbian people in the United States. It's also
Speaker 1: an opportunity for reflecting on the universe that existed at
Speaker 1: the time of Stonewall, on government surveillance and oppression of
Speaker 1: gay and lesbian and transgender people, and on the changes
Speaker 1: that have been wrought over the last half century, both
Speaker 1: the changes that have made things so much better for
Speaker 1: many gay and lesbian people and the failures to change
Speaker 1: that continue to affect many many people in various areas
Speaker 1: of our lives. We'll start by hearing from Mark Seagull,
Speaker 1: a Stonewall veteran from Philadelphia. When I was eighteen. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, LGBT people were invisible. We weren't on TV,
Speaker 1: we weren't on radio. We were there was no such
Speaker 1: thing as a podcast. So growing up as an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old in Philadelphia City at one point six million,
Speaker 1: I literally thought I was the only gay person there. So,
Speaker 1: since you knew, you couldn't ask people about who you were,
Speaker 1: since it was something that was only talked about in
Speaker 1: whispers about, the only place you could do that was
Speaker 1: at the library, where you might, if you were lucky,
Speaker 1: find five books, and each of those books might tell
Speaker 1: you that you were immoral, illegal, and mentally incompetent. And
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like that was me, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to escape that phil Adelphia invisibility. So I went where
Speaker 1: I thought there were other gay people at eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: which was New York. And I moved to New York
Speaker 1: on May tenth, nineteen sixty nine, a date which I
Speaker 1: will always remember because to me, that representative freedom and
Speaker 1: for the first day I could begin to be myself.
Speaker 1: When you went to New York at that point, there
Speaker 1: were no neon signs which said where there's a gay area,
Speaker 1: because even in New York in nineteen sixty nine, it
Speaker 1: was illegal to be gay, and gay people could not
Speaker 1: legally congregate. Gay people could not go into a bar
Speaker 1: and ask for a drink. A bar that served non
Speaker 1: homosexuals would lose its liquor license. So one of the
Speaker 1: few places you could do that in was an illegal
Speaker 1: bar called the Stonewall. And in the Stonewall you could
Speaker 1: be yourself. It was a dingy, illegal bar which served
Speaker 1: water down drinks, but when you went inside, you could
Speaker 1: be yourself. And that was the magic of Stonewall. On
Speaker 1: June twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, the first day of
Speaker 1: the Stonewall Rising, Mark had only been in New York
Speaker 1: for about seven weeks. In New York at the time,
Speaker 1: it was relatively a regular thing for the police to
Speaker 1: come in and raid the Stonewall. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: that night because for me eighteen, I had never been
Speaker 1: in a ray before, and so when the police came in,
Speaker 1: I was sort of shocked and terrified to be honest.
Speaker 1: But what usually happened, I found out later, was they
Speaker 1: would come in, take their corruption money and just leave.
Speaker 1: But that night was unusual in the fact that they
Speaker 1: barged him, threw people against the wall, roughed them up
Speaker 1: a little, hurled every kind of insult you can imagine us,
Speaker 1: which we've heard our entire lives. And then what shocked
Speaker 1: me the most was they went to people who looked
Speaker 1: like they were prosperous or successful and literally asked them
Speaker 1: to take out their wallets and took the money from
Speaker 1: those wallets and put it in their pockets. That I
Speaker 1: think showed me how little they disregarded us, that we
Speaker 1: meant nothing to them. This was the police stealing and
Speaker 1: what are we to do? Call the police? They were
Speaker 1: the police. And then slowly but surely they allowed us
Speaker 1: to leave the bar by guarding us, and we didn't disperse.
Speaker 1: And the police they got their corruption money, They did
Speaker 1: what they wanted to do, and they were ready to leave.
Speaker 1: Every time they opened that door, we wouldn't leave. We
Speaker 1: eventually started throwing stones, cans, or what anything we could
Speaker 1: find on the street at those doors, and the police
Speaker 1: literally were afraid to open the door. They were imprisoned
Speaker 1: inside stone wall. It is the first time that we
Speaker 1: imprisoned our oppressors. That's the reason why it's called a riot,
Speaker 1: and that's the reason why it's history is for the
Speaker 1: first time, we fought back as a people. As for
Speaker 1: me standing there, you know, I felt full of adrenaline.
Speaker 1: While I was terrified inside the bar, Once I got
Speaker 1: outside the bar, my attitude, mind, body all changed. It
Speaker 1: became super charged, full of adrenaline and very joyous. But
Speaker 1: I was so happy to be fighting back and the
Speaker 1: standing up for who I was. And I'm sure everybody
Speaker 1: who was there felt the same exact way. We were happy.
Speaker 1: It probably was the happiest riot in the history of
Speaker 1: American because we were fighting back for the first time.
Speaker 1: There was just a scene of joy. I'm sure the
Speaker 1: police didn't feel that way. I think they were terrified.
Speaker 1: They had never seen anything like that. They'd always thought
Speaker 1: they could do whatever they wanted to us. And this
Speaker 1: went on for hours, and I literally at one point
Speaker 1: was standing across the street watching the scene in front
Speaker 1: of me, and I remember thinking that was gonna be
Speaker 1: what I was gonna do with the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And at that time, there was no term called gay activist,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know what the hell I was going
Speaker 1: to be. I just knew that's what I was going
Speaker 1: to do, and I also thought i'd be poor for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life because getting paid to be
Speaker 1: a professional gay activist. If there was no salary attached
Speaker 1: to it, but it was my passion, then it's my
Speaker 1: passion now. Mark Seagull went on to become the founder
Speaker 1: and publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News and the president
Speaker 1: of the National Gay Newspaper Guild. Another person whose life
Speaker 1: was deeply affected by Stonewall is Joan Nessel. Joan is
Speaker 1: a truly fascinating person. Born in nineteen forty, she protested
Speaker 1: against the activities of the House An American Affairs Committee.
Speaker 1: She became an activist, ultimately joining a wide range of
Speaker 1: lesbian and gay rights groups. She became a writer, a professor.
Speaker 1: She founded the Lesbian and Herstory Archives, and she has
Speaker 1: continued to teach and think about questions of liberation and
Speaker 1: the erotics of desire from the time of Stonewall very
Speaker 1: much up to the present. She joined us all the
Speaker 1: way from Australia. Hello, Hi, Joan, Hi, It's Noah Feldman.
Speaker 1: How are you okay? It's an early dark morning here
Speaker 1: in Melvern, Australia. So I hope I have a flow
Speaker 1: of words. I'm sure you will. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. One of the reasons that we wanted
Speaker 1: to have this conversation with you is that we're all
Speaker 1: looking back fifty years later on the Stone Wall uprising
Speaker 1: and trying to understand its context. It's meaning what it
Speaker 1: meant to the people who were there in it. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if you would start by helping us to
Speaker 1: just set the stage for Greenwich Village in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. As a lesbian person making your way there,
Speaker 1: what was it like for you? Let me start ten
Speaker 1: years earlier, because all these beginnings have befos. When I
Speaker 1: was seventeen, I was just a desiring young woman looking
Speaker 1: for the lesbian touch, and that's what drove me to
Speaker 1: follow women who look like lesbians. We're talking nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: so in Greenwich Village, right down the streets to see
Speaker 1: where they were going. It was this whole underworld that
Speaker 1: I was desperate to be a part of. And you
Speaker 1: were from the Bronx. So how did you know to
Speaker 1: go down to Greenite Village. Davian cultures have a way
Speaker 1: of finding who needs them, and the village was it
Speaker 1: seems to me. As soon as I knew there was
Speaker 1: another place outside of the Bronx, was known as a
Speaker 1: place for queer people. And that I want to say
Speaker 1: that it was a very real word. That two words
Speaker 1: freak and queer, which is what end in my head
Speaker 1: as I entered this world. So I walked into a place.
Speaker 1: There was a place called the Sea Colony and it
Speaker 1: became part of me for ten years. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: Sea Connie was also in the West Village, just a
Speaker 1: short walk from from where where the stonewall in is. Yes,
Speaker 1: tell us about the Sea Connie. So all our bars
Speaker 1: were policed and we were criminals a minute we entered
Speaker 1: that those doors. So one way there was things called
Speaker 1: the vice Squad, and the vice Squad patrolled queer i'll
Speaker 1: use meeting places. And one way they did it was
Speaker 1: there was a phenomena called the bathroom line. And what
Speaker 1: this was There was a line for all these lesbian
Speaker 1: women drinking a lot of beer, you know, to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, as simple as that. But because we
Speaker 1: were considered criminal, our bathroom habits had to be policed,
Speaker 1: meaning only one woman at a time was allowed into
Speaker 1: the bathroom and to control that behavior. Now, this is
Speaker 1: all done from the bar owners cooperating with the Vice
Speaker 1: squad police. So they could keep the bar open. There
Speaker 1: was a butch woman that i've whose job it was
Speaker 1: to give us our allotted amount of toilet paper. And
Speaker 1: why I understand the why the one person why the
Speaker 1: allotment of toilet paper, because that was the way to
Speaker 1: control You couldn't get past her us to inform us
Speaker 1: that our behavior was being watched and being controlled. So
Speaker 1: it became part of our I called it a line act.
Speaker 1: We flirted on that line. We knew it awaited all
Speaker 1: of us. I had a double consciousness on that line,
Speaker 1: and maybe many others did two that this was the
Speaker 1: state and the state intruded on us. Is also part
Speaker 1: of the Stonewall time was that we knew and we
Speaker 1: dressed to go to the bar, that we had to
Speaker 1: put on three pieces of women's clothing or we could
Speaker 1: be arrested for transvestism. We couldn't. We weren't allowed to dance,
Speaker 1: we would be arrested for indecent behavior. So the line
Speaker 1: was part of it. It lived in my mind as
Speaker 1: the powers of the state to control our bodies. So
Speaker 1: part of the Stone Wall story is desire, and that
Speaker 1: often does not get talked about. It's what propelled me
Speaker 1: to take on the state. In those bars, every Saturday night,
Speaker 1: the police, the same cop would come in. We were
Speaker 1: allowed to dance in a small back room. The front
Speaker 1: room was for straight people who wanted to come and
Speaker 1: look at the queers, and they'd sit at tables. But
Speaker 1: the back room was where we could dance women together,
Speaker 1: and it had a red light, and that was our
Speaker 1: wanting to sit down and not touch each other because
Speaker 1: the police, the same cop was coming in for his payoffs,
Speaker 1: and he'd come into the back room. He'd look us over.
Speaker 1: He had a wad of bills in his hand, and
Speaker 1: invariably he would pick some butchwoman who was with a
Speaker 1: very attractive fam that would enrage them and humiliate her.
Speaker 1: I witnessed one night when a butcheroman was thrown up
Speaker 1: against the wall of the sea colony outside, and this
Speaker 1: cop made her tack her pinstone to show her that
Speaker 1: she wasn't really a man. You describe a very movingly
Speaker 1: the dance of desire and then the constant surveillance of
Speaker 1: the state, And you also spoke very convincingly about the
Speaker 1: thought that this was going to break, that there would
Speaker 1: be resistance. Can you describe to us what it was
Speaker 1: like when you you were outside the Sea Colony, you
Speaker 1: heard that something had happened the day before at Stonewall.
Speaker 1: You you went down to Waverley Place, What did you see?
Speaker 1: What was the scene? Like, Yes, I'm walking from my
Speaker 1: um my tenement apartment apartment from the East Village to
Speaker 1: the West Village to get to my bar the Sea Colony.
Speaker 1: It's warm. I always remember the heat, like the heat
Speaker 1: of the body, but this was the heat of us
Speaker 1: the night. And as we approached um where Stonewall was,
Speaker 1: and it was it's a big thoroughfare, everything changed. It
Speaker 1: was like I've never been in a moment of of
Speaker 1: of conflict, of you know, armed conflict, but that's what
Speaker 1: it seemed like. There were flashing lights, and there were
Speaker 1: um people felt like hundreds of people just running and
Speaker 1: milling around, and there were shouts of resistance, and there
Speaker 1: was energy and there, but there was also fear because
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite sure what was happening. And for a minute,
Speaker 1: I just stood there. I just stood and took it
Speaker 1: all in and I knew something was changing. And what
Speaker 1: I saw in the street that night, the second night
Speaker 1: after Stonewall, was the power of a people's descent the
Speaker 1: refusal to allow their bodies to be policed without respect
Speaker 1: for their being, all their desire. And I keep emphasizing sexuality.
Speaker 1: That was what drove me, as a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: into a policed place, knowing that I was I could
Speaker 1: be arrested any minute for doing a simple thing like
Speaker 1: touching another woman. But I wanted to be where my body,
Speaker 1: as any young person, could experience its own erotics. And
Speaker 1: so that was a public face of a humiliated erotics.
Speaker 1: I would say that was in the street that night.
Speaker 1: And then also it was also the courage of those
Speaker 1: who had the least doing the most. And this is
Speaker 1: what struck me in my own boss because my bar
Speaker 1: was a working class bar, and I say it became
Speaker 1: our community. We go there every weekend, so we knew everybody,
Speaker 1: and we probably it was the one place we all met.
Speaker 1: So there were passing women, women who others thought were men,
Speaker 1: who worked as taxi drivers, worked at stock clerks who
Speaker 1: did the things at men usually kinds of jobs. There
Speaker 1: were sex workers. It was a huge meeting place of pariahs.
Speaker 1: Is the word, and that is the word that has
Speaker 1: been haunting me both. You know, I'm a working class
Speaker 1: girl who lived on ideas and Hannah Arrant's idea of
Speaker 1: the pariet. I think that's part of what's happened at Stonewall.
Speaker 1: It's when the pariats taking everything with pride that made
Speaker 1: them and also what the society has judged, and doing
Speaker 1: something different with that heritage. And there was an exuberance.
Speaker 1: There's an exuberance once without nothing, you make love in
Speaker 1: the face of the state. And do you think that
Speaker 1: do you think that that that mode of resistance that
Speaker 1: you're describing gave a certain strength or a certain beauty,
Speaker 1: or a certain form of resistance that's actually difficult for
Speaker 1: later generations to recapture or to reimagine, because you know,
Speaker 1: for later generations there's of course still a homophobia, they're
Speaker 1: still biased, they're still transphobia. None of those things has disappeared.
Speaker 1: But typically, and certainly in Greenwich Village, but typically elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the United States too, it's less likely that the
Speaker 1: state would be the primary source of surveillance, less likely
Speaker 1: that the state would be the primary source of force
Speaker 1: or violence. So there's been in that degree something some
Speaker 1: things have begun to change significantly. I speak a lot
Speaker 1: with young people and they ask me the same question.
Speaker 1: All they used to and they learned, and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: I wish i'd come out when you did. It was
Speaker 1: so you know, you had to. It was so exciting.
Speaker 1: And I look at them, I say, don't you worry.
Speaker 1: Your times will give you your stonewall. And that is happening.
Speaker 1: My main concern is the rise of the fascistic right.
Speaker 1: These privileges that we're given, all these so called recognitions,
Speaker 1: one can be taken back very quickly, as Trump and
Speaker 1: his ilk unraveled democratic institutions. But look look at the contrast.
Speaker 1: I'm so in ninety fifty, yet I'm in a bar
Speaker 1: where every part of me is policed. But I felt
Speaker 1: so alive. I knew, I knew I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: take that. I knew nothing they could offer me was
Speaker 1: worth the culture we were creating under such dorists. And now,
Speaker 1: in one of the most obscene political moments in American history,
Speaker 1: queer people are being in a way celebrated. New York
Speaker 1: is flowing with queer love, and that's wonderful in some ways.
Speaker 1: And I see how it moves the young people, and
Speaker 1: I see all of that, But the larger context, the
Speaker 1: Force movement the shutting of doors to migrants. This is
Speaker 1: all part of my queer self. Now, the pariah is
Speaker 1: always aware of when the door is shut of who
Speaker 1: becomes the new face of the unwanted. People will say, oh,
Speaker 1: you must be so happy, You must be so happy
Speaker 1: being a gay person. You know you don't have to
Speaker 1: take your allotted amount of toilet pill. First of all,
Speaker 1: there is still many who are metaphorically, and secondly, there
Speaker 1: are new Humanity didn't doesn't end with a queer positioning
Speaker 1: in one time, in one place. Often there are there
Speaker 1: are what I hear are echoes or hints in your
Speaker 1: In your analysis of you spoke of working class consciousness.
Speaker 1: You spoke of identification across groups. And I wondered whether
Speaker 1: at any of these times that we've spoken about you
Speaker 1: self identified as a socialist or a Marxist store, And
Speaker 1: I wonder how that, how do you think about the
Speaker 1: interaction between that identity and your your other identities. Well,
Speaker 1: they're all of a piece, are past or like a rope.
Speaker 1: But I my beginning point, Well, the women who stood
Speaker 1: beside me, and some were passing women, so they were
Speaker 1: would be part of it, a trance community, some with
Speaker 1: sex workers, and that's always been an important community to me.
Speaker 1: It was for them. Everything I did, in a way
Speaker 1: was for them. They touched my young woman's body. They
Speaker 1: were the first who gave me that deep pleasure. And
Speaker 1: but more than that, more than that, they gave me
Speaker 1: a narrative of courage with bruises, with hardship, with economic deprivation.
Speaker 1: But they tried so fullheartedly to create a life for themselves.
Speaker 1: So I feel honored. I feel honored, and I feel
Speaker 1: honored to know the young people now who are trying
Speaker 1: to do the same in Trump America. Joan, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking us to the Sea Colony and
Speaker 1: to Stonewall, and to the entire world of people for
Speaker 1: whom you've worked and in whose honor you've described what
Speaker 1: you've been doing. Thank you. It's an extraordinary honor for
Speaker 1: me to have the chance to talk to you, and
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to you for sharing your stories with us.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm just sitting here pishing, But that's okay too.
Speaker 1: That's a good part of life as well. You've you've
Speaker 1: earned that. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's
Speaker 1: a privilege and fascinating to hear from people like Joan
Speaker 1: Nessel and Mark Siegel, who both lived in such an
Speaker 1: immediate and powerful way a series of crucial historical moments
Speaker 1: a whole long, complicated period of historical evolution. It's made
Speaker 1: me reflect on a lot of things. Among other things,
Speaker 1: it makes me reflect on my extraordinary and lucky privilege
Speaker 1: as a straight, white CIS gender man with his own
Speaker 1: podcast embarrassingly enough, who gets to talk to people who
Speaker 1: are fascinating, to people who have confronted real fundamental challenges,
Speaker 1: the Begger, the imagination when they compare to anything that
Speaker 1: I've encountered in my life. It also makes me think
Speaker 1: going forward about how we should think about the legacy
Speaker 1: of civil rights struggles like the gain lesbian rights struggle
Speaker 1: that has followed Stonewall. Should we think of those struggles
Speaker 1: as models of what our society can achieve. Should we
Speaker 1: congratulate ourselves on what we've done and try to use
Speaker 1: that self congratulation to extend new rights to other vulnerable
Speaker 1: people like trans people. Well, that is part of it.
Speaker 1: I think if we don't tell ourselves these stories of success,
Speaker 1: we will give up trying, We will become pessimistic, we
Speaker 1: won't make the effort the next time we need some
Speaker 1: myths of great success in civil rights to take us forward.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the great danger of that kind
Speaker 1: of self satisfied self gratulation, especially from people like me
Speaker 1: who come from privilege, is to say, look, how well
Speaker 1: we've done. We have extended rights to lots of people.
Speaker 1: That has the effect of allowing us to be blind
Speaker 1: to continuing violations of rights, to ongoing forms of discrimination,
Speaker 1: to structural discrimination that comes from the economy, not only
Speaker 1: from the government but also from private sector entities, and
Speaker 1: to forms of exclusion that sometimes just pass by the
Speaker 1: consciousness of people who can get away with that, avoiding
Speaker 1: the consciousness of people who in fact suffer. So we
Speaker 1: need both. We need to pat ourselves on the back
Speaker 1: just a little bit in order to have encouragement for
Speaker 1: the future. But we also need to keep our eyes open.
Speaker 1: We need to make sure that when the next civil
Speaker 1: rights movement begins, as many have, that it doesn't take
Speaker 1: fifty years for us to say, there you go, something
Speaker 1: significant has been accomplished. Deep Background is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Genecott, with engineering
Speaker 1: by Jason Gambrel and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is composed by Luis Gera special thanks
Speaker 1: to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. This is deep background