OutCasting; A look back at the Stonewall uprising — a two-part interview with Professor Karla Jay (Part 2 of 2)

i spent the whole it in the struggle what i really wanted to have a why writing have gone all the marches and more of a struggle was i wanted people to look at my first book were there every time that people other people like this this is a casting public radio's lgbt q youth program we don't have to be queer to be here how casting is a production of media for the public good a listener supported independent producer based in new york online outcast media dot org hi andrea on this edition about casting al kassar sarah talks with carla jay about the stonewall uprising a series of riots at a new york city gay bar in june nineteen sixty nine the uprising is widely seen as martin the turning point in gay activism carl what is a longtime activist and author she was involved in the second wave feminism and was the first female chair of the gay liberation front she's also a retired distinguished professor of queer studies and women's studies at peace university in

your city this is part two of a two part interview both parts are available on our website about casting media guard kyle welcome back well we left off last time we were talking about the early activism by the magazine society for gay man and the daughters of the leaders for lesbians in the fifties and sixties we also discussed the stonewall uprising itself was tune out what happened immediately afterward well the bus tour radical got together and formed what became a gay liberation from you know people start meeting as soon as a few days later the gay liberation front was more radical from the beginning and so were many of the kids that followed what did those who favored a less radical approach do if you were conservative gary or lesbian person they saw that for the threat they pose to find telling people to do more with being

yourself and go home and go do those beliefs for this kind of behavior as giving hamas thousand indians or hummus actually they ignore hamas' power which means a lover are of same sex love are like that a big name for that was that probably in the entire range of reaction to this and then i think people would throw people might have been horrified that was probably an entire range of reactions before the uprising there had been debate between various factions over whether to stick with the moderate assimilation is to approach or to take a more radical approach so it makes sense that the riots were controversial within the community you see a change in a style of activism yes the people although formed the gay liberation front were completely different from the old group the armed groups were very traditionally organized neo a leader and i

wore a league leading to another action like my child who came out of the women's movement where i have also organized radical of that because we felt that what we call the facts were called fall of fun ways too you and your cds instead of picketing in front of let's say a legislature we might take over in all things instead of beginning in front of a television show and my faith terrible thing to homosexuals we would

one action had to do with the nyu where i was a graduate student now and i recall it was supposed to be a dance again dance and when they cancel their wi fi the dormitory we went into his oratory and they tried to get us out they turned out the air conditioning in the basement and homeless for years you know like that i mean they did very thing we're trying to tell without getting people so are wary of trying to make change was to try to force that we believed and i have to say that i still consider myself in my heart of hearts of radical and i think that this is you know a radical believes that the patriarchy make laws that protect for picher and they

won't rule on the books they can change in a blink of an eye i hope you're wrong but i think they may be about to change the laws that we work for the turkey for all the years since though we felt that that kind of radical cultural change that could be made by changing institutions by forcing places to change their habits and the public has not be undone the way that we made people that we exist and that there were so many lesbian gay man that we were your neighbor your friends and we were your worst nightmare and your best fantasy and we're right there and if you didn't give us what we wanted that we were going to try to take it

that radical vision charity to negotiate with more middle of the road people oh all right remember their community negotiate with church leaders shifting more respectable to replace them have the police department and they start to make changes in how institutions are run by the people of the street themselves visible right now they have a listen to the other people for all those years they've been trying to have community meetings with the power to blank i know there are many other views on this and i'm not trying to discount all of the efforts that went into making marriage equality possible things like that

radical religion was probably reinforced a real change in consciousness of the first change in consciousness in this country and part of that had to do with a radical and they arrive stressed the word you follow we've never never heard anybody many of those came as the ferry you know in all of the groups they belong to god we have we went to actually many people got arrested i don't know anybody get hurt not a lot less they were women of color who organizers of the leaders and as far as i know they were a small group and i think they tried as best they could to treat people equally the gay

liberation front had a number of people of color in the eventual booker often called themselves the street action revolutionaries to prime movers in that but also people of color sylvia rivera who is latino and more share p johnson who are with african american they both the thief there either you're hispanic and african american people not too many and i remember they might have been one or two asian american people who were there and they were issues that were not in the way that they probably could have been a hard and eventually the women of color broke away there was a group that was called selfless officers i really speak you know for people to think that they were just poorly on the lake you

want some accounts hear and also i bent on cardinal fan who was there were some people who wanted to form an alliance with the black panther movement and there was some resistance to that part of that was the course the black panther movement is quite sexist writing the only woman who spoke about parents so around and you know angela davis is still a professor at king in california women shelter for the pampers weekend when i was in california noted pianists we're invited in and the member came in new and quite a lot of debate about oranges were these other radical groups as time went on the difficulties we

face what happened by the end of nineteen seventy one the gay liberation front was dissolving and other groups the gay activists alliance for ready for me so you are groups were kind of fluid and groups really did last end neuwirth how well movements going on a whilst they really were allowed for food in these groups in nevada a lot of people especially gay liberation front did not get along with each other and have opposing political views and so you know these groups chambers arthur levitt groups came along and then morris groups came along groups of address the needs of these groups that were with the end the gay liberation front group for transgendered people group for lesbians came

along group for women of color came along that was really good actually even though you know the major group fell apart i don't see that as a negative in the end one of the things they gave lasting importance to the stonewall uprising was an activist almost immediately recognized that the uprising had always presented an opportunity for a major change in activism and they seized the moment a fire in your city the first march came a year after the riots it was known as the christopher street liberation day march and that set a pattern for gay pride that would eventually spread to many parts of the us and the world tell us about those daily marches let us march i was no more scandalous and more than you think things about the first margins in your family the rowing marchers were found in other words they started at the stonewall and they went to central park where there was a rally

in the minds of many people live life well for a start up how it almost you marching people down to the bars and new marching people down to a commercial entity you know in her eye and their heart in that the early march is more political in los angeles where i marched in the first march they had a few clothes but they were kind of e near the faithful are they weren't white or floats or a commercial for the ever tightening something and we walked in the center of hollywood and people threw things there are very few people on the sidelines back then you know we won

maybe there were a thousand people marched in boston you are really large for a better word signature again they're the year later we get and that we get it and that there were these marches it goes also won the first year in san francisco is well in nineteen seventy and they started to spring up all over the country and that really is where the significant you know and it's claiming over the years ago the us this is a testing public radio's lgbt q youth program produced by media for the public good in your online at outcast media dot org on this edition out faster cera is talking with carla jed about the stonewall uprising a series of riots and the new york city gay bar in june nineteen sixty nine the uprising is widely seen as working a turning point and gay activism carl is a longtime activist and author she was involved in the second wave of feminism and was the first female chair of the gay

liberation front she's also retired distinguished professor of queer studies and women's studies at pace university in new york city this is part two of a two part interview both parts are available on our website a casting mia dot org you said earlier that one thing it's good and it's bad the stonewall marched the good thing is that it creates a kind of years ago they entered kind of bonding experience for people were in sochi a march but the thing is that for people who come out only once here they can feel somewhat complex in a way that they've done their thing and when they can just go back to whatever it is they do the other three hundred and fifty four days here and there really isn't going to cut it in terms of creating social change

well i wonder what i really wanted others to my writing but i really wanted to have the stonewall inn the marches and more of our struggles was my good friend cherie i wanted people to look at my first book in thirty one and he's doing here let's put in fi fi fiction were there ever a time that people treated other people like there's a thicket of america well it really what i hope for the future not that we would be out every year are hoping that the next to take our right away from us which they are doing on a very steady basis around the country now says it's unfortunate that the struggles of lgbt people are still so

commonplace even with social and political advances being made the threat of repression looms soon after the first pride march one ivins was one that gradually changed the national understanding of what it meant to be gay before nineteen seventy three homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual or dsm in essence the bible of mental health but in nineteen seventy three homosexuality was removed in the dsm what effects did this have on how queer people thought about themselves you know we were really can be seen as a milestone that homosexuality was not an illness most people walk up to the reclassification and their lives were exactly the same you can argue that that was a fictional piece of work that only slowly helped changed the way people thought about themselves you know i don't know they need by

the who was big news about queers the next day said oh i feel the best i don't know the new battery would really change that in my changed an initial diagnosis or it probably would change part of the way all the next generations of psychologists my going to the practice with another minder sent that was probably the largest changed and i applaud the people who were going to italy including people like barbara getting to work tirelessly to get diagnostic change it certainly was worth doing our guest is carla jenkins a longtime goal should be teaching

activist and retired distinguished professor of women's studies and queer studies carla as the nineteen seventies progressed so did the gay movement along with many other movements which often intersected was a conflict between a gay movement and the women's movement many for dan who is the head of that in many ways you know in nineteen seventy with extremely homophobic seen the one who said the lesbians were a lavender menace who would story the women's movement if we were let him and the radical women's movement which consisted of the second wave of women's liberation groups like white stockings near radical feminists led stockings coined the phrase the purse most political but when it came to lesbians it was just personally they fit lorry didn't want to do it was written reg brown co

driver now and with editing the noble either she was one of the people who was fired because she was a lesbian and what we'd about that was we who were members of the women's movement and the gay liberation front we organize a group we got together in the winter of nineteen seventy eight and we met in apartments and we wrote a manifesto which we eventually called the woman identified woman yeah like a leg and we were the manifesto and it really was a collectively written documents and then we made a t shirts that had banned full on them lavender menace and that the fact in congress tonight women which

was a national convention which was meeting at pier forty one in greenwich village in may nineteenth only we have placards we have the t shirts we had a number of women who were all ready to go for one hundred started we had one of our gaps a few of the women went backstage they had chased out the auditorium and when the congress started they were backstage and that all of the whites so that the laboratory with completely in darkness and when the lights went back on lesbians in a lavender menace t shirts were completely filling up the aisles of the floor victorian with kind of like a lesbian to launch we're in his first years we are women's liberation phone we were also and

i was one of the people i was planted in the audience in street clothes with a lavender menace t shirt undermining clothing and i said something like and hiram bingham mclachlan this movement i pulled off white blouse and there was my land him in the future and we demanded yeah well and wesleyan of them had never been on the agenda of any women's conference and we also demanded and social class be on the agenda and none of these issues have ever been addressed a conference by the women's movement and he was from that moment their lesbianism became an issue for the women's movement and also more races and now i have to say the radical groups

tried a little bit more to address racism but like much of the other women's movement they were mostly middle class white women so that was uneasy relationship between the women's movement and loving woman on the orient a lot of the women's movement and i have to say than the gay movement some of the men which actions some of the men were following some of the minerals so when it was difficult to be a lesbian live in movement clearly still not a tremendous impact on the course of gay activism can you think of any recent events that put the magnitude of what happened at stonewall in perspective for today's youth i think that were starting to flee doing events that i think that the elections i usually like to buy the popular vote

and you know of all of this manipulation who knows the way in which people have been taking to the streets i think that they're starting to fade a kind of public anger that is reminiscent of the public anger of the nineteen sixties part of the strategy of the writer is to make people feel so crazily because they're being attacked in every direction we are and you care about racism and years not a trans person and you really care about the rights of tradespeople and you care about the rights of bisexual than you care about marriage equality and you care about people in syria and

if you can go on and on right and you care about choice you know i had so many friends whose lives were ruined either by a legal abortion or lack of illegal abortions i can even start to go there so if you feel a little crazy by what's going on the world you know exactly what this world was like in nineteen sixty million you know i'm very encouraged by the fact that people are taking to the streets now and going back to stonewall and being out with on the frontline every year the united states to very no it not might confound to what's going on and i'm going to try to do wherever i can every day too the world is at war

yeah it's encouraging to see that people are still trying to make a difference throughout our modern history demonstrations and uprisings have often contributed to a major social cultural political and legal changes that have improved conditions from minorities before the stonewall uprisings the climate for gay people was pretty brutal and when they were finally pushed too far the crowds in a near the stonewall inn revolted in a way that entirely changed the face of the major civil rights movement kirk thanks so much for joining us to talk about this pivotal event in the long fight for what we now call lousy be teaching civil rights college is a longtime activist and author she was involved in the second wave of feminism and was the first female chair of the gay liberation front she's also a retired distinguished professor of queer studies and women's studies at pace university in new york city this is part two of the tea party both parts are available on our website a casting mia dot org that's it for this edition about casting public radio's lgbt q youth

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