Sylvia Riveras powerful speech against the exclusion of transgender people at the Gay Pride Rally NYC, 1973.
Transcript:
Y'all better quiet down! I've been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help! And you all don't do a goddamn thing for them! And they write STAR, not the woman's group! They do not write women, they do not write men, they write to STAR! Because we're trying to do something for them! But you all tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs! I will not put up with this shit! I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken, I have been thrown in jail, I have lost my job, I have lost my apartment for gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?! What the fuck's wrong with you all?! Think about that! I believe in the gay power, I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights, that's all I wanted to say to you people. Come and see people at STAR House on Twelfth Street, the people that are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to our white middle class club! And that's what you all belong to! Revolution now! Gay power! Know the gay power!
For anyone unaware, the “STAR” she keeps referring to here is the group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries,* which she and Marsha P Johnson formed in an attempt to fold the liberation of trans women into the wider New Left movement. Through the groups short history, they organized Mutual aid for homeless trans women (so-called “street queens”), fought for Trans women's inclusion within the wider gay rights movement, and even co-sponsored events with groups like the Black Panthers and Young Lords
*This booklet was prepared by an anarchist who wrote a very bad introduction, but it’s the most comprehensive archive of contemporary media to do with STAR I have yet found
