Musings on Stonewall Thirty years later
copyright Michael Safdiah 1999

I posted those clippings from the papers right after the Stonewall riots that year, 1969, it shows the way we gays were portrayed by the press, in this case, The Daily News.

Maybe it's why I became an activist. I was always a gadfly, a trouble maker. Lots of people SAY they were in the bar that night, there isn't a bar big enough to hold everyone who SAYS they were there, but... well, I -- little me -- was actually there in the bar that night, a kid, underage, wide eyed, and had slipped out before the shit hit the fan. Funny as I stood outside on that sidewalk at Sheridan Square Park that warm spring night, watching the mob scene slowly build up to a riot, uncertain really what was happening, and frightened by it, I had no idea that I was watching history being made. Does anyone ever!

People say "wow" when I tell them I'm a Stonewall Vet, as though it was something special to have stumbled into a riot that I had no part in causing. It's crap, I can't take any credit for it. I wish I could have. It was the drag queens who took the initiative, bless them, not me, a queer kid who was ashamed of being associated with them other 'real' queers. I told myself I wasn’t like "them". (Remember that one?) All I wanted that night was to find somebody to take me home and show me some affection, and I had to go to a hole like that to find it.

The real hero, I wish I knew who, so I could thank him now, was that queen who threw her high-heel at the cop who was busily cleaning out the cash register in the bar that night. The one who shouted "That's it. I've had enough" and who stood up and said what was on all our minds. The real heroes, then as now, are the outspoken ones who took their stand that night. The drag queens I detested because they represented a part of me I rejected.

The bar had been shaken down all along, by the cops and everybody knew it, even me, who knew nothing first-hand but listened to what the older guys talked about. Raids were commonplace, and so were perfunctory arrests. So were the payoffs. It was a fact of life. This was no unusual raid, not at first glance, but the way this particular one ended up…
Here’s what I recall: June 28, 1969

I was standing in a corner in the bar near the door, having come out of the bathroom with a beer can I’d just refilled with water, I didn’t have the price of a beer and wanted to look as though I belonged. I was hoping that someone would walk over to me and say hello, I was terrified and had no idea what to say. I hardly noticed when exactly it happened, but I became aware there were cops in the room, and also a few plain clothes, but I could tell they were cops. The rest happened as in a dream, and just as quickly.

They walked over to a few of the drags and started asking them for ID, and shoving them toward the door. Parked outside was a shiny square black truck with steps leading up to a door on the back: The infamous Black Maria, notorious paddy wagon for rounding up victims to be carted off to the Sixth Precinct station on Charles Street. It was commonly known that people, especially gays, were beaten and brutalized when they were taken there. I was never arrested, but from the talk on the street, (most of our social interactions those days were out on the street) I knew we all dreaded it.

Through the open doors, I could see they began to shove a few of the ‘girls’ rather roughly into the van, and then ten things all happened at once. Someone, began yelling, another shouted and dropped to the floor. Another started to throw bottles, someone threw a woman’s high heel shoe. It hit the cop who was behind the bar at the cash register, doubtless he was gathering ‘evidence’. The pump thrower ran somehow to the rear of the bar, and began to throw glasses, and then bottles.

The resistance had spread like wildfire to the paddy wagon, where one captive was struggling with a cop who gave up and let him go when he heard the ruckus inside.

I still have no idea how I made it outside, everything happened so fast, but chalk it up to my self preservation instincts and becoming small in the face of danger. I stood there for what must have been hours while the patrons had barricaded themselves inside, and the police were outside wondering what to do. It was a standoff, and the street had already filled with spectators.

The cops by then had barricaded themselves inside the bar and Tactical Police Reinforcements showed up in riot gear and charged the crowd, which dispersed throughout the tiny streets and regrouped again around the bar again taunting the police. I found myself throwing anything I could find, and so did everyone nearby. The wonderful thing I recall to this day is that the police were baffled by the resistance, they never expected that we’d stand up and fight back. There were real guns drawn, that was the most frightening thing of all, but no one was shot. Today I imagine it would be an entirely different story--New York Police nowadays shoot to kill.  I stayed out on the streets all that night, and the crowd broke up sometime around sunrise the next day.

It's been thirty years since that night, so much has happened, and instead of merely being a spectator, I'm more angry than ever. All my life it seems I've watched other people make waves. Watched other people make speeches, start rebellions. I've always been a cog in the wheel. Other people's wheels. After losing over a hundred loved ones to a plague, having my hypocritical government selectively ignore me when it solemnly states, "and Justice for all". Doesn’t "all" include me? When justice is denied to even one of us, it exists for none of us. Please remember that. This has become my wheel now.

The Fire Island beach party to commemorate the loss of loved ones, the fund raiser to fight the very plague we're all dying from, is portrayed as a monster by so-called gay writers who bash it to sell their cheap crappy books. These guys are shills and use their being gay to get people to publish their books. Well it’s a free country, so far. Police dismiss real crimes against gays as inconsequential, "because they're just queers", well, you get the idea. I can take it from outside, but when gays demean their own, and for profit, not for self betterment, man, that sucks.

I've personally experienced this, I can't marry a man I love, or share employee benefits with a same sex spouse, or hold hands on the street without looking behind me unless I know I'm safe inside one of a very few gay ghettos in the country. The very existence of the gay ghetto only proves how unsafe the rest of the country really is.

Stonewall is my history, it's yours too, we all have a stake in civil rights, by now we know the truth: When one persons rights are abridged, none of us is safe.

I'm ashamed of the times I stood on the sidelines and just watched others suffer - and as long as it wasn't me, I could stay clear of the mess, and walk away saying, "How sad. Somebody should do something about that. Somebody, but right now I have the restaurant to attend to, or something else, but not to take a stand, not to march, not to be a Harvey Milk, Randy Shilts, Larry Kramer, or Peter Staley." Lately it’s all I hear from people -- too busy to march on Washington too busy to write a letter or to make a call to a legislator. But let them hear about a white party, that’s a totally different story. Are we getting what we deserve?

This is me after thirty years of Stonewall - It's changed me, I'm no longer passive, I've decided that I will no longer stay passively on the sidelines, and that if I want anything more for my life's quality, I will have to do more to earn those rights.
There's so much to be done. So very much. That's my point, and if I'd done more, and if there were more who'd done more, instead of ONLY drugs and dance, the condition of Gay civil rights would be much different than it is today.

There are laws, mans' laws on paper, but we must also recognize those laws of existence which over-ride them. I will do my best to make those paper laws reflect those higher ones, and which the framers of The Constitution of The United States would have included. I pray that one day in my lifetime I will see it happen, and that I’ll have some satisfaction for knowing I helped to bring it about.