User:ReluctantRambler/Vanguard (organization)

Notes for Article

- Bulk remove plagiarized information, try to find more reliable sources for it? Maybe trim down the current history section, connect Vanguard to broader movements and trends

- Turn history information into a timeline? A section on origin, a section on dissolution, and a trimmed-down timeline in the middle?

- Make Vanguard1965 website a clearly discussed source, mention it's hypothetical connections to Adrian Ravarour

Notes for Vanguard:

- Fix missing citations, probably through connecting to Stryker's work

- Bring in other scholars to back up Stryker?

- 86, 93-94, 95-96 in stryker

- gay liberation and trans liberation shared space in US cities among working class, as seen in dewey and cooper donut incidents. vanguard is first org for gay and trans youth, published a magazine

- compton's cafeteria riot of 1966 in the same vein as dewey and cooper; happened in august, date unknown, trans activism directly leading to real and lasting change. tenderloin was a sex-work heavy district of the city

- immediate causes: discrimination against trans people in housing and employment, police brutality against trans women (accusations of being sex workers) and poor treatment in jail, military-influenced crackdown against homosexual activity, urban renewal leading to neighborhood destruction for 'progress,'

- response was a mobilization of a large-scale, grassroots effort for eradication of poverty, economic justice for working class and poor, etc. (Central City Anti-Poverty Program Office)

- the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church worked with Vanguard loosely, ministers associated with Glide shared Vanguard's commitment to care for the youth and resist harmful, stereotypical understandings of sex and gender. First trans support group here, Conversion Our Goal: it quickly splits along the lines of a militant, street-culture faction and an assimilationist faction

- Vanguard formed of gay buskers and trans people as part of this grassroots mobilization (Adrian Ravarour as founder, who was a Mormon minister), held informal meetings at Compton's (Street power, rather than Black power or White power, as the goal). Caring for neighborhood and residents as the goal, intervention with people who were 'risks,' cleaning streets, etc. First political action was an attempt to change how Compton's management treated queer people (notably trans women)

- compton's would charge people for sitting and not ordering, hired security guards to target youth sitting and not buying (especially trans youth), called cops on queer and trans people in greater frequency. Vanguard, Glide, + some SF homophiles attempted a picket line (like at Dewey), and ended up attempting militant resistance after the picket proved unsuccessful at provoking change

- BROADER CONTEXT: trans healthcare becoming vaguely more accessible, thanks to Dr. Harry Benjamin's Transsexual Phenomenon (calls for a return to Hirschfeld style treatment). This may have sparked hope and influenced activism to attempting to produce change rather than just basic subsistence and survival. (Benjamin worked in SF yearly, so some tenderloin trans people were his patients, see Center for Special Programs, SF Public Health Department).

Lead
Vanguard, an organization made for LGBT youth (primary gay and trans youth), was active in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco from 1965-1967. Vanguard, originally an organization dedicated to building "street power," grew into a more radical queer rights organization during the tenure of its second leader, Jean-Paul Marat (a pseudonym taken from a French Revolutionary leader). The trans-friendly stance of Vanguard was influenced by recent developments in transgender healthcare in the United States. Dr. Harry Benjamin published The Transsexual Phenomenon in 1966, which argued for supporting medical transition and for caring for trans people rather than pathologizing them. The text also argued to return the style of treatment employed by Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. Susan Stryker, scholar and professor of transgender history, has argued that Vanguard's shift towards militancy (most notably seen in the Compton's Cafeteria Riot) was a combination of Benjamin's medical views gaining credence in the US (a number of his patients may have been Vanguard members, as they lived in the Tenderloin) and other queer riots at the time. These other riots occurred at Cooper Do-Nut in Los Angeles in 1959 and Dewey's, a cafeteria in Philadelphia, in 1965.

Article body
Adrian Ravarour, a Mormon youth minister based in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, founded the gay-rights organization Vanguard in 1965, which lasted until 1967. Despite being nominally a gay rights organization, Vanguard members connected the struggles of their gay members with the struggles of their transgender members, building an inclusive movement centered on queer youth on city streets. Susan Stryker, in her book "Transgender History," argues that Vanguard is the first such organization in the United States created explicitly for queer youth. The organization dissolved in 1967, but the publication it produced, Vanguard Magazine, continued until 1978 under Keith St. Claire.

Vanguard encouraged both its members and the broader queer community to use militant tactics as part of an effort to produce social change and make a safer environment for queer people, with Vanguard's first large-scale militant action being the Compton's Cafeteria Riot of 1966. Vanguard held formal and informal meetings in Compton's, as Vanguard's largely poor, queer, young, and socially ostracized members found the Cafeteria to be more accessible than other places in the Tenderloin. In response to the queer youth of Vanguard using Compton's with greater frequency, management attempted to limit access to the restaurant. Vanguard members faced "service charges" for using the space without purchasing food, security guards, and management calling police on queer youth in the restaurant.