Around 200 people marched through downtown Long Beach carrying signs and waving rainbow flags during the 52nd anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising on Sunday, June 27.
“That night on June [28], 1969, those folks were experiencing something that was very common—that was raids by the police on their lives,” Audrena Redmond of the Long Beach chapter of Black Lives Matter said during a speech at Bixby Park following the march.
The Stonewall Uprising began when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, violently resisted a police raid on the business on June 28, 1969, which led to five days of civil unrest.
At the time it was common for police to regularly raid gay bars and brutalize those inside.
According to a popular—but unverified—version of the story, the uprising began once someone in attendance threw a brick at the police officers during the raid.
Over the following days, riot police attempted to quell the demonstrations through force, but members of the LGBTQ+ community would quickly regroup, often in larger numbers than before, to continue resisting the police.
“People felt the courage to throw that brick, and to throw those punches that were more than necessary,” Redmond said.
Redmond noted in a speech to the crowd that the Stonewall Uprising was a turning point in the LGBTQ+ community’s struggle.
“Stonewall was not the first time that folks stood up. It was not the first time. What it was was the time that led to something more,” Redmond said.
According to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights—in the two years after Stonewall— gay rights groups were formed in major cities across the country.
The first gay pride parades in the United States were held on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
Redmond compared the Stonewall Uprising to the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020, since both occurred in response to police violence.
“Let us never forget that the police are the brutal arm of the money class and the religious class. They are the front line inhibitors of our freedom, that is how they’re used, that is what they do, they continually organize in that way,” Redmond said.
Off to the side of the stage where the speakers stood, an altar was erected in honor of the transgender and gender nonconforming individuals who had been killed during 2021.
Roses covered the ground in front of the altar, with photos of 29 victims lining five wooden tiers.
“It is one of the most violent years against trans people,” Noah Reich, who created the altar with his partner David Maldonado, said.
2020 was the most deadly year on record for transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the United States, with 44 individuals killed, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Already in 2021, 29 transgender and gender nonconforming people have been killed.
Besides the violent murders of trans people that have occurred, over the past year multiple states have also passed laws restricting transgender youth from competing in team sports.
“We continue to see trans youth being attacked on a federal level,” Byron Adams of Queers Obliterating White Supremacy said. “We have to continue the momentum and continue fighting and standing with our queer people, with the future, with the young folks, with Gen Z, who are coming out.”
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