SYLVIA RIVERA (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002)
Sylvia Rivera was a gay rights activist that was a regular at Stonewall and present at the Stonewall Riot. She was quoted shouting out, “I’m not missing a moment of this – it’s the revolution!” the night of the riots. She was a Venezuelan and Puerto Rican civil rights and gay liberation activist.
At the age of 11, she was thrown out on the streets and made her living as a sex worker. This experience hardened her, but also opened her up to the possibility of working to help others. According to Carrie Davis, Chief Programs and Policy Officer at New York City’s LGBT Community Center, “Sylvia was drawn to helping the poor, the homeless, people of color, gender non-conformists. She used her outsider status to help make change.” (Reyes, 2015)
She and Martha P. Johnson worked together to create STAR, also known as Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The organization worked to provide housing and support for queer people on the street. In 1973, she was representing STAR at a Gay Liberation rally and gave a speech that is now known as “Ya’ll Better Quiet Down.” In the speech, she called out straight men who prey on trans women and drag queens in the community.
At the same event Rivera and fellow queen Lee Brewster jumped onstage during feminist activist Jean O'Leary's speech and shouted "You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!”
After Sylvia Rivera’s death, Michael Bronski recalled Rivera's anger when she felt that she was being marginalized within the community: “After Gay Liberation Front folded and the more reformist Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) became New York's primary gay rights group, Sylvia Rivera worked hard within their ranks in 1971 to promote a citywide gay rights, anti-discrimination ordinance. But for all of her work, when it came time to make deals, GAA dropped the portions in the civil rights bill that dealt with transvestitism and drag — it just wasn't possible to pass it with such "extreme" elements included. As it turned out, it wasn't possible to pass the bill anyway until 1986. But not only was the language of the bill changed, GAA — which was becoming increasingly more conservative, several of its founders and officers had plans to run for public office — even changed its political agenda to exclude issues of transvestitism and drag. It was also not unusual for Sylvia to be urged to "front" possibly dangerous demonstrations, but when the press showed up, she would be pushed aside by the more middle-class, "straight-appearing" leadership.
In 1995, Rivera stated "when things started getting more mainstream, it was like, 'we don't need you no more’. But hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned".
River didn’t just fight for queer rights. She also fought for the rights of people of color. She recognized her own intersectionality and was not okay with the current state of how people of color were treated. Mainstream LGBTQ groups didn’t care that she was latina and often dismissed or ignored her status as a person of color. Furthermore, Latino human rights groups ignored Sylvia’s contributions to helping their struggles with human rights. She has been erased from queer and latino history for far too long.
Rivera died in 2002 due to complications with liver cancer. Like Storme Delarverie, she was also deemed the Rosa Parks of the gay liberation movement.
Watch her 1973 speech below:
