Additional information
by Lisa Beard (Author)
In June 1973, amid ideological rifts in the U.S. gay liberation movement, thousands of people gathered in New York City's Washington Square Park to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Partway through the rally, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) co-founder Sylvia Rivera fought her way to the stage to address the predominantly white, middle class lesbian and gay crowd. Over the din of their boos and jeers, Rivera reprimanded the crowd for failing in their responsibilities to their "gay brothers and sisters" in jail, detailed the sacrifices she had made for the movement, and called them into the politics of STAR, "The people who are trying to do something for all of us and not men and women that belong to a white middle class white club! And that is what you all belong to!" Rivera's appeal thus worked through a push-pull of distance and belonging, shaming the movement for its assimilatory turn while invoking forms of kinship and calling her
listeners into an expansive multi-issue liberation politics.
political theory rooted in Black, Latinx, queer, and trans activism in twentieth and twenty-first century America.
Author Biography
Lisa Beard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University. Beard's work has been published in Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, National Political Science Review (now National Review of Black Politics), and in the edited volume A Political Companion to James Baldwin.
