This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots on June 27th in NYC. I recently heard a radio story about the moon landing on July 20th, 1969 and it suddenly dawned on me that the two events transpired within a month of each other. Presumably few people knew about the riots in New York and everyone watched the lunar landing but nevertheless, they are inextricably linked in the moment’s cultural zeitgeist.
Marsha "Pay It No Mind" Johnson
Pondering that thought brought me visions of drag queens and astronauts. I wonder where Marsha P. Johnson was on the day of the moon landing. Barely a month after she fought back against police at the Stonewall Inn, did she sit in a smokey bar and watch Americans landing on the moon? It must have felt like the whole world was changing. Indeed, her longtime friend and fellow transgender activist Sylvia Rivera summed up the moment “I’m not missing a minute of this, it’s the revolution.” Appropriately, she and Marsha went on to found the organization STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
The progress in technology and civil rights since that summer forty years ago is amazing. I’d love to see what Marsha would make of today’s gay pride celebrations. But we haven’t been back to the moon or continued on to any other planets. And the gay rights movement is still trapped in the narrow minded, assimilationist tactics that characterized it in the late 60’s. Where are our flying cars? Where is the queer movement that looks beyond equality to actually honor and value the transgender heroes who stepped out of the shadows to fight for all of us?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As we marvel over another successful shuttle launch comingled with the weekend’s Pride parade I’m grateful to Marsha P. Johnson … up there watching it all.
Posted by pixellava 
