User:Carbon Caryatid/Stonewall 25

Notes for an article, some day.

Gay Marchers Celebrate History in 2 Parades

By JANNY SCOTTPublished: June 27, 1994 

Tens of thousands of gay men and lesbians surged through Manhattan yesterday, celebrating a civil-rights movement that took its first steps during a police raid on a gay bar 25 years ago and seemed in the last week to have come of age.

They marched in not one but two parades -- an officially sanctioned one on the East Side of Manhattan demanding that the United Nations protect the rights of homosexuals worldwide, and a smaller, unofficial one up Fifth Avenue from Greenwich Village, organized by several dissenting groups that broke ranks with the others to make the point that the most urgent problem facing gay people is AIDS.

A WEEK ABOUT GAY PRIDE, AND PREJUDICE

By Paula Span June 16, 1994  The Stonewall 25 events, culminating in the International March on the United Nations to Affirm the Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People on June 26, are also freighted with symbolic importance. Stonewall is the gay bar where, in June 1969, a routine police raid was met with days of rioting and resistance. In the aftermath, gay liberation groups formed across the country, marking a shift in political and social attitudes toward homosexuality that continues.

Though the Stonewall anniversary is marked each year, this will be the first international gay political event, its organizers say. The order of march goes like this: a mile-long striped rainbow flag, carried by 10,000 volunteers (each having made a donation to AIDS charities for the privilege); a cadre of veterans of the Stonewall riots; a motorcycle escort by the lesbian riders known as Dykes on Bikes. The 350 contingents that follow will represent more than 70 foreign countries and organizations ranging from labor unions and gay churches to recovering addicts and PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Hundreds of marchers will carry poster-size photographs of people who are too ill from AIDS to participate, or who have died.

Of the two organizational groups behind the month's events, Stonewall 25 has had the more difficult time. The Gay Games have raised more than $4 million of their $6.5 million budget, Hill says, and expect to collect most of the rest through ticket sales and Gay Games merchandise. Such corporations as AT&T, Continental Airlines and Miller Brewing have made six-figure financial commitments.

The Stonewall group had to contend not only with fund-raising competition from the Games but with an intrinsically more controversial agenda. "Politics, especially gay and lesbian politics, is always quote-sensitive-unquote," Norman says. Stonewall 25 has had to cut its budget from a hoped-for $4 million to $1.6 million, and has had to cancel or scale back several events.

Some critics have noted that the organization's insistence on using the phrase "lesbian, gay, bisexual, drag and transgender people" probably didn't encourage corporate comfort. Stonewall 25, emphasizing that drag queens were among the Stonewall rioters, has refused to change its wording.



Remember Stonewall! But How?; Gay Groups Clash Over Commemoration of a Riot in 1969

Published: May 6, 1994  It was intended to be the ultimate celebration of gay pride, the zenith of a movement that began with a police raid and riot at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village 25 years ago. But less than two months before the giant march and rally planned to mark the anniversary, the event is mired in a bitter debate among gay New Yorkers over how best to commemorate the historic night.

Some leaders of gay groups complain that the event's political significance has succumbed to commercialism, and they say the people who were at the Stonewall on the night of the raid, many of them transvestites, have been excluded from the planning so as to make the event more palatable to mainstream gay marchers.

Others feel that the committee organizing the event, Stonewall 25, made up largely of gay rights advocates from other cities, has snubbed New York by failing to consult enough with local organizers like those who plan the annual Gay Pride Parade.



An essential oral history of the NYC Pride March

 “There were two marches for Stonewall 25. The authorized one went up First Avenue because there was some tie-in with the UN. But Act Up and others led a protest march up Fifth Avenue to draw attention to AIDS. We were sure we were going to get arrested but everybody kept walking and soon we were in Central Park meeting the other parade. My favorite part is that a picture with me behind an Act Up banner made the wire services and ended up running in my hometown newspaper in Virginia. My mother cut it out and laminated it and kept it in her wallet until the day she died. She’d show it to people and say, ‘This is my son, he’s a gay activist.’”—Bob Speck, theater professional



Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures

George Haggerty

Routledge, First Published in 2000. p565

Mayor Applauds Police On Gay March Strategy

By ALISON MITCHELL

Published: June 28, 1994  From a helicopter above Manhattan on Sunday, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani watched as the city's Police Department, without an arrest or an injury, managed tens of thousands of people marching toward Central Park -- some of them illegally -- to commemorate the day 25 years ago when that same department had clashed violently with homosexuals at a Greenwich Village bar.

The Advocate 28 Jun 1994

 The Stonewall Shuffle