Trigger Warning: police violence
In the early morning of 28th June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn as part of their ongoing harassment and over-policing of LGBTQ+ people, particularly those who were also sex workers, homeless people, trans people, and people of colour. This attack served as a breaking point, leading to an uprising against the police and a catalyst for a global LGBTQ+ movement, from which the very concept of Pride was born.
Today, 51 years later, we see the same type of behaviour used against Black people. For this reason, it is impossible to celebrate Pride without wholeheartedly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Stonewall Riots were truly sparked by the assault of Stormé DeLaverie, a Black butch lesbian. The Black Lives Matter movement has experienced its latest resurgence as a result of the murder of George Floyd. But neither of these were isolated incidents. In both cases, a marginalised community was subjected to so much brutality and violence that fighting back is not only acceptable, it is good.
Both of these events happened in America, but that does not make the UK innocent.
The arrest, castration and imprisonment of gay men for "gross indecency" (being gay), remained actively enforced until 1967 (and even then, it was only repealed in England and Wales, not Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, or the Isle of Man). For context: my mother was alive when this was still the case. Even after the repeal, police continued to harass and disproportionately target LGBTQ+ people in the UK.
We see less of this today (although certainly not none), but how much of that is simply a shift in who is being targeted? There is a scene in the film Pride (2014) where Mark points out that the reason that the police seem to be targeting gay people less is because they're out attacking the striking miners instead. The disproportionate policing and harassment is focused on Black people, as well as immigrants, Roma people, and Muslims. And for those in our community who are part of multiple marginalised groups, they don't get the luxury of a reprieve.
To sit here as a white queer person and condemn the Black Lives Matter protests and riots would be to say that the rights which queer people won in the past 51 years should be repealed. We have everything because of action built off of and during riots - real riots, not just middle-class sign waving in a pre-approved area with police signing off on any chants before they're allowed to be heard. We've been here before and seen that it works.
And in 51 years, when I'm even more of a grumpy old bastard, my biggest hope is that we'll have finally stopped repeating history.
By Tristan Oscar Smith
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