Post by Admin on Jun 29, 2021 18:38:13 GMT
Coming Out Against Imperialism
By
James Greig Omar Shweiki
In the 1970s, pioneering gay activists in the US and Britain saw the fight against homophobia as part of a much broader struggle – one which linked Pride to the cause of liberating the world's oppressed peoples.
tribunemag.co.uk/2021/06/how-the-gay-liberation-movement-fought-colonialism-and-imperialism
‘Gay Liberation is for the homosexual who stands up, and fights back.’ In 1970, the year after the Stonewall riots, fliers for the first Christopher Street Liberation Day captured the theory, practice and spirit of a new generation driven to action. The origins of this new movement and its principles of popular mobilisation, however, can be found as much in the struggles for freedom fought in Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa and Palestine as Manhattan’s West Village or Islington’s Highbury Fields.
Stonewall wasn’t the first time queer people in the US had revolted against police repression, but its importance reflects a revolutionary moment in the history of LGBTQ+ struggle. The riots signalled a new unity forged between the established, largely white homosexual rights campaigns and an insurgent movement of people of colour – and the integration of the new gay liberation movement into revolutionary political fronts across the world. By the mid-1960s, riots against police violence exploded across the US, largely led by Black youth. The people who confronted the police at Stonewall belonged to the most criminalised sections of society: Black, Latinx, homeless, sex workers and gender non-conforming people. A large number of participants were seasoned activists already involved in a wide range of struggles, a fact that is elided by the contemporary understanding of Stonewall as a purely spontaneous eruption.
By
James Greig Omar Shweiki
In the 1970s, pioneering gay activists in the US and Britain saw the fight against homophobia as part of a much broader struggle – one which linked Pride to the cause of liberating the world's oppressed peoples.
tribunemag.co.uk/2021/06/how-the-gay-liberation-movement-fought-colonialism-and-imperialism
‘Gay Liberation is for the homosexual who stands up, and fights back.’ In 1970, the year after the Stonewall riots, fliers for the first Christopher Street Liberation Day captured the theory, practice and spirit of a new generation driven to action. The origins of this new movement and its principles of popular mobilisation, however, can be found as much in the struggles for freedom fought in Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa and Palestine as Manhattan’s West Village or Islington’s Highbury Fields.
Stonewall wasn’t the first time queer people in the US had revolted against police repression, but its importance reflects a revolutionary moment in the history of LGBTQ+ struggle. The riots signalled a new unity forged between the established, largely white homosexual rights campaigns and an insurgent movement of people of colour – and the integration of the new gay liberation movement into revolutionary political fronts across the world. By the mid-1960s, riots against police violence exploded across the US, largely led by Black youth. The people who confronted the police at Stonewall belonged to the most criminalised sections of society: Black, Latinx, homeless, sex workers and gender non-conforming people. A large number of participants were seasoned activists already involved in a wide range of struggles, a fact that is elided by the contemporary understanding of Stonewall as a purely spontaneous eruption.