Sunday, June 28, 2009 will be the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Inn Riots in NY City. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Stonewall is frequently cited as the first instance in American history when gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and the Stonewall Riots have become the defining event that marks the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.


The Stonewall Inn was a Greenwich Village bar frequented by drag queens (many of them Puerto Rican) and their admirers. It was June 27, 1969. Judy Garland had died. Much of gay Manhattan was in mourning. New York’s finest were on routine gay-bashing patrol.

Their timing was not good.

The drag queens decided they had had enough. Instead of letting the police cart them away, they turned the tables, blockading the police inside the bar, using parking meters to bash police cars and breaking into impromptu taunts of the cops (who badly underestimated the crowds of supporters who began to gather).

The underground network spread the word, as did the newspapers which ran a small item the next day. So, over the next several nights more LGBT folks turned out, and over the next few months, groups formed-everything from Gay Academics to Radical Lesbians-and by the next year there were Pride Marches in Manhattan and Los Angeles. This history clearly matters to LGBT folks-which is why there will be a massive Pride march in New York on June 28. But this liberation history matters to everyone.

The world, not just LGBT folks, but the entire world, is a better place because of fed-up drag queens at Stonewall.