Rest In Peace

Sylvia Rae Rivera

8th Anniversary of her Death

1951 - February 19, 2002

Thanks to wikipedia, we learn that Rivera was born July 2, 1952 and raised in New Your City and lived most of her life in or near that city. She was of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent. Her birth name was Ray (or Rey) Rivera. She was abandoned by her birth father José Rivera early in life and became an orphan after her mother committed suicide when Rivera was three years old. Rivera was then raised by her Venezuelan grandmother, who disapproved of Rivera's effeminate behavior, particularly after Rivera began to wear women's makeup in fourth grade.^[3] As a result, Rivera began living on the streets at the age of eleven, where she joined a community of drag queens.

She was one of those rabble rousing resisters to queer oppression who literally led the charge at the Stonewall Inn, New York City, on the night of 27th of June, 1969, the night that a riot at the bar, touched off the open radicalization of the Gay Liberation Movement fighting back against police harassment directed at the most visible members of the community. She became a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance and helped found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group dedicated to helping homeless young street transwomen, with her friend Marsha P. Johnson.

Rivera spent most of her life at the forefront of both transgender and gay activism, tirelessly advocating and demonstrating for LGBT rights, inclusive social policies and struggling against transphobia.

In 1970 Rivera formed a group called S.T.A.R. - Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - to fight for the civil rights of transgender people, and provide them with social services support. The S.T.A.R. House lasted for two years until her crack habit caused her to lose the house. It was the first institution of its kind in New York City, and inspired the creation of future shelters for homeless street queens.

In 2000, she reformed S.T.A.R. pressuring the Human Rights Campaign to be more inclusive of transgender people. Even when hospitalized with liver cancer, Rivera never stopped working for the civil rights of transgender people and several hours before she passed away on February 19, 2002 she was meeting with LGBT community leaders.

An active member of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Rivera ministered through the Church's food pantry, which provided food to the hungry. Recalling her life as a child on the streets, she remained a passionate advocate for queer youth, and MCC New York's queer youth shelter is called Sylvia's Place in her honor.

February is Black History Month

Qui c'est ça, ce couillon-la qui dit que << On va battre ces Saints ? >>

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~~And the Dream Will Never Die ~~

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Happy 81st Birthday,
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“... The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are…
....But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust..”

Excerpts from Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Today in Gay History

H/T to Band of Thebes

HAPPY 11oth BIRTHDAY
William Haines (January 1, 1900-1973)

In 1925, MGM's leading male actor was the charming William Haines and he remained a top-five grossing star from 1928 to 1932. Handsome and funny, his typical character was a clever, athletic young narcissist whose giant ego was deflated before he finally won the day. As for that self-adoring trait, Haines fell in love with his double, Jimmy Shields, whom the studio had hired as his stand-in, and starting in 1926 they lived together openly for nearly fifty years, causing their friend Joan Crawford to declare them "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."

Perhaps, but their happiness came at a high price. In 1933, seven years into their relationship and still at the height of his fame, Haines cruised a sailor in Pershing Square and they went back to the YMCA to have sex, only to be busted by the police. Louis B. Mayer, the genius tyrant running MGM, insisted Haines enter into a fake marriage, and when he refused, choosing to stay with Shields, Mayer canceled his contract, virtually ending his career. As plucky as his characters, Haines and Shields opened an interior design studio which was an immediate success. Two years later, a neighbor claimed they propositioned his son and as a result members of the Ku Klux Klan broke into their house, hauled them outside, and savagely attacked them. Once again, rather than shunning the gay couple, their famous friends and colleagues rallied to support them: Haines' co-star Marion Davies begged her lover William Randolph Hearst to get the neighbor arrested and many others, including Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Charles Boyer, and even George Burns, implored them to tell the police about the attack, but given their past experience they did not.

Their design studio flourished for decades. They created interiors and furniture for a top tier of international clientele beyond the Hollywood luminaries, George Cukor, Jack Warner, the Annenbergs, the Reagans, and Gloria Swanson, who urged Haines to accept a part in her own comeback movie, Sunset Boulevard, which he declined. Although Haines died on Boxing Day 1973 and Shields killed himself with an overdose of pills soon after, in their shared bed, wearing Haines pajamas, their design studio was recently revived. Look at their lovely work here. And say a prayer of thanks to William J. Mann for rescuing Haines from obscurity with his excellent biography, Wisecracker.

Bonne Année

Joyeux Noël

Joyeux Réveillon de Noël

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