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Title: Queers Read This Author: Anonymous Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Queer, militancy Source: Retrieved on 2021-12-12 from https://lib.edist.ro/library/anonymous-queers-read-this
QUEERS READ THIS was distributed as a leaflet at the June 1990 Pride
march in New York City. Anonymous queers offer this republication of
QUEERS READ THIS as a contribution to the militant queer tendency. We
are excited to find a text almost 20 years old that so eloquently
expresses the deep anger and the desire for conflict that we leel every
day living in a straight world. The authors define straightness as
different from heterosexuality. Straightness is a force in the world and
inside each of us that we must purge (p2). Straightness is normality.
The norm for queer people is to take oppression lying down. These
authors urge us to fight back. They ask why, when we are being bashed
and killed. we freak out at angry queers who carry banners rhar say BASH
BACK (p15). Of course. we could nor agree more The culrural references
in his leaflet are, at times, outdated, but the rage is timeless.
How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother, sister that your
life is in danger: That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy,
and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You
as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary.
There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages
your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these
words. You should by all rights be dead. Don’t be fooled, straight
people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you’re
smart, lucky or a fighter.
Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they
please and fuck without fear. But not only do they live a life free of
fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face. Their images are on my TV,
in the magazine I bought. in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the
street where I live. I want there to be a moratorium on straight
marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among the opposite
sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the
same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege
must stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and
brothers.
Straight people will not do this voluntarily and so they must be forced
into it. Straights must be frightened into it. Terrorized into it. Fear
is the most powerful motivation. No one will give us what we deserve.
Rights are not given they are taken, by force if necessary. It is easier
to fight when you know who your enemy is. Straight people are your
enemy. They are your enemy when they don’t acknowledge your invisibility
and continue to live in and contribute to a culture that kills you.
Every day one of us is taken by the enemy. Whether it’s an AIDS death
due to homophobic government inaction or a lesbian bashing in an
all-night diner (in a supposedly lesbian neighborhood).
Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to
be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression;
homophobia, racism, misogyny. the bigotry of religious hypocrites and
our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves.)
And now of course it means fighting a virus as well. and all those
homo-haters who are using AIDS to wipe us off the face of the earth.
Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the
mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism. patriarchy or being assimilated.
It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about
being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-fuck and
secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about
the night.
Being queer is “grass roots” because we know that everyone of us, every
body, every cunt. every heart and ass and dick is a world of pleasure
waiting to be explored. Everyone of us is a world of infinite
possibility. We are an army because we have to be. We are an army
because we are so powerful. (We have so much to fight for; we are the
most precious of endangered species.) And we are an army of lovers
because it is we who know what love is. Desire and lust. too. We
invented them.
We come out of the closet. face the rejection of society, face firing
squads, just to love each other! Every time we fuck, we win. We must
fight for ourselves (no one else is going to do it) and if in that
process we bring greater freedom to the world at large then great.
(We’ve given so much to that world: democracy, all the arts, the
concepts of love, philosophy and the soul, to name just a few gifts from
our ancient Greek Dykes, Fags.)
Let’s make every space a Lesbian and Gay space. Every street a part of
our sexual geography. A city of yearning and then total satisfaction. A
city and a country where we can be safe and free and more. We must look
at our lives and see what’s best in them, see what is queer and what is
straight and let that straight chaff fall away! Remember there is so, so
little time. And I want to be a lover of each and every one of you.
Next year, we march naked.
The strong sisters told the brothers that there were two important
things to remember about the coming revolutions. The first is that we
will get our asses kicked. The second, is that we will win.
I’m angry. I’m angry for being condemned to death by strangers saying.
“You deserve to die” and “AIDS is the cure.” Fury erupts when a
Republican woman wearing thousands of dollars of garments and jewelry
minces by the police lines shaking her head, chuckling and wagging her
finger at us like we are recalcitrant children making absurd demands and
throwing temper tantrum when they aren’t met. Angry while Joseph
agonizes over $8,000 a over for AZT which might keep him alive a little
longer and which makes him sicker than the disease he is diagnosed
with.[1] Angry as I listen to a man tell me that after changing his will
five times he’s running out of people to leave things to. All of his
best friends are dead. Angry when stand in a sea of quilt panels, or go
to a candlelight march or attend yet another memorial service. I will
not march silently with a fucking candle and I want to take that
goddamned quilt and wrap myself in it and furiously rend it and my hair
and curse every god religion ever created. I refuse to accept a creation
that cuts people down in the third decade of their life.
It is cruel and vile and meaningless and everything I have in me rails
against the absurdity and I raise my face to the clouds and a ragged
laugh that sounds more demonic than joyous erupts from my throat and
tears stream down my face and if this disease doesn’t kill me, I may
just die of frustration. My feet pound the streets and Peter’s hands are
chained to a pharmaceutical company’s reception desk while the
receptionist looks on in horror and Eric’s body lies rotting in a
Brooklyn cemetery and I’ll never hear his flute resounding off the walls
of the meeting house again. And I see the old people in Tompkins Square
Park huddled in their long wool coats in June to keep out the cold they
perceive is there and to cling to whatever little life has left to offer
them. I’m reminded of the people who strip and stand before a mirror
each night before they go to bed and search their bodies for any mark
that might not have been there yesterday. A mark that this scourge has
visited them.
And I’m angry when the newspapers call us “victims” and sound alarmed
that “it” might soon spread to the “general population.” And I want to
scream “Who the fuck am I?” And I want to scream at New York Hospital
with its yellow plastic bags marked “isolation linen/ropa infecciosa”
and its orderlies in latex gloves and surgical masks skirting the bed as
if its occupant will suddenly leap out and douse them with blood and
semen giving them too the plague.
And I’m angry at straight people who sit smugly wrapped in their
self-protective coat of monogamy and heterosexuality, confident that
this disease has nothing to do with them because “it” only happens to
“them.” And the teenage boys who upon spotting my Silence=Death button
begin chanting “Faggot’s gonna die” and I wonder, who taught them this?
Enveloped in fury and fear, I remain silent while my button mocks me
every step of the way.
And the anger I feel when a television program on the quilt gives
profiles of the dead and the list begins with a baby, a teenage girl who
got a blood transfusion, an elderly baptist minister and his wife and
when they finally show a gay man, he’s described as someone who
knowingly infected teenage male prostitutes with the virus. What else
can you expect from a faggot?
I’m angry.
Since time began, the world has been inspired by the work of queer
artists. In exchange, there has been suffering. there has been pain.
there has been violence. Throughout history. society has struck a
bargain with its queer citizens: they may pursue creative careers, if
they do it discreetly. Through the arts queers are productive,
lucrative. entertaining and even uplifting. These are the clear-cut and
useful by-products of what is otherwise considered antisocial behavior.
In cultured circles. queers may quietly coexist with an otherwise
disapproving power elite.
At the forefront of the most recent campaign to bash queer artists is
Jesse Helms, arbiter of all that is decent, moral, Christian and
Amerikan.[2] For Helms, queer art is quite simply a threat to the world.
In his imaginings, heterosexual culture is too fragile to bear up to the
admission of human or sexual diversity. Quite simply, the structure of
power in the Judeo-Christian world has made procreation its cornerstone.
Families having children assures consumers for the nation’s products and
a work force to produce them, as well as a built-in family system to
care for its ill, reducing the expense of public healthcare systems.
ALL NON-PROCREATIVE BEHAVIOR IS CONSIDERED A THREAT. from homosexuality
to birth control to abortion as an option. It is not enough, according
to the religious right, to consistently advertise procreation and
heterosexuality... it is also necessary to destroy any alternatives. It
is not art Helms is after... IT IS OUR LIVES! Art is the last safe place
for lesbians and gay men to thrive. Helms knows this, and has developed
a program to purge queers from the one arena they have been permitted to
contribute to our shared culture.
Helms is advocating a world free from diversity or dissent. It is easy
to imagine why that might feel more comfortable to those in charge of
such a world. It is also easy to envision an Amerikan landscape
flattened by such power. Helms should just ask for what he is hinting
at: State sponsored art, art of totalitarianism, art that speaks only in
Christian terms, art which supports the goals of those in power, art
that matches the sofas in the Oval Office. Ask for what you want, Jesse,
so that men and women of conscience can mobilize against it, as we do
against the human rights violations of other countries, and fight to
free our own country’s dissidents.
Queers are under siege.
Queers are being attacked on all fronts and I’m afraid it’s ok with us.
In 1989, there were 50 “Queer Bashings” in the month of May alone —
violent attacks. 3,720 men, women and children died of AIDS in the same
month. caused by a more violent attack-government inaction, rooted in
society’s growing homophobia. This is institutionalized violence.
perhaps more dangerous to the existence of queers because the attackers
are faceless. We allow these attacks by our own continued lack of action
against them. AIDS has affected the straight world and now they’re
blaming us for AIDS and using it as a way to justify their violence
against us.[3]
They don’t want us anymore. They will beat us, rape us and kill U5
before they will continue to live with us. What will it take for this
not to be ok? Feel some rage. If rage doesn’t empower you, try fear. If
that doesn’t work, try panic.
Be proud. Do whatever you need to do to tear yourself away from your
customary state of acceptance. Be free. Shout.
In 1969, Queers fought back. In 1990, Queers say ok.
Next year, will we be here?
I hate Jesse Helms. I hate Jesse Helms so much I’d rejoice if he dropped
down dead. If someone killed him I’d consider it his own fault.
I hate Ronald Reagan. too, because he mass-murdered my people for eight
years. But to be honest, I hate him even more for eulogizing Ryan White
without first admitting his guilt.[4] without begging forgiveness for
Ryan’s death and for the deaths of tens of thousands of other PWA’s
(People with AIDS)---most of them queer. I hate him for making a mockery
of our grief.
I hate the fucking Pope, and I hate John fucking Cardinal fucking
O’Connor. and I hate the whole fucking Catholic Church.
The same goes for the Military, and especially for Amerika’s Law
Enforcement Officials---the cops---state-sanctioned sadists who
brutalize street transvestites. prostitutes and queer prisoners
I also hate the medical and mental health establishments, particularly
the psychiatrist who convinced me not to have sex with men for three
years until we (meaning he) could make me bisexual rather than queer. I
also hate the education profession, for its share in driving thousands
of queer teens to suicide every year. I hate the “respectable” art
world; and the entertainment industry, and the mainstream media,
especially The New York Times. In fact, I hate every sector of the
straight establishment in this country- the worst of whom actively want
all queers dead, the best of whom never stick their necks out to keep us
alive.
I hate straight people who think they have anything intelligent to say
about “outing.” I hate straight people who think stories about
themselves are “universal” but stories about us are only about
homosexuality. I hate straight recording artists who make their careers
off of queer people, then attack us, then act hurt when we get angry and
then deny having wronged us rather than apologize for it. I hate
straight people who say, “I don’t see why you feel the need to wear
those buttons and t-shirts. I don’t go around telling the whole world
I’m straight.”
I hate that in twelve years of public education I was never taught about
queer people. I hate that I grew up thinking I was the only queer in the
world, and I hate even more that most queer kids still grow up the same
way. I hate that I was tormented by other kids for being a faggot, but
more that I was taught to feel ashamed for being the object of their
cruelty, taught to feel it was my fault.
I hate that the Supreme Court of this country says it’s okay to
criminalize me because of how I make love.[5] I hate that so many
straight people are so concerned about my goddamned sex life.
I hate that so many twisted straight people become parents, while I have
to fight like hell to be allowed to be a father.
I hate straights.
I wear my pink triangle everywhere. I do not lower my voice in public
when talking about lesbian love or sex. I always tell people I’m a
lesbian. I don’t wait to be asked about my “boyfriend.” I don’t say it’s
“no one’s business.”
I don’t do this for straight people. Most of them don’t know what the
pink triangle even means. Most of them couldn’t care less that my
girlfriend and I are totally in love or having a fight on the street.
Most of them don’t notice us no matter what we do. I do what I do to
reach other lesbians. I do what I do because I don’t want lesbians to
assume I’m a straight girl. I am out all the time, everywhere. because I
WANT TO REACH YOU. Maybe you’ll notice me, maybe we’ll start talking.
maybe we’ll exchange numbers, maybe we’ll become friends. Maybe we won’t
say a word but our eyes will meet and I will imagine you naked,
sweating, openmouthed, your back arched as I am fucking you. And we’ll
be happy to know we aren’t the only ones in the world. We’ll be happy
because we found each other, without saying a word, maybe just for a
moment. But no.
You won’t wear a pink triangle on that linen lapel. You won’t meet my
eyes if I flirt with you on the street. You avoid me on the job because
I’m “too” out. You chastise me in bars because I’m “too political.” You
ignore me in public because I bring “too much” attention to “my”
lesbianism. But then you want me to be your lover, you want me to be
your friend, you want me to love you, support, you, fight for “OUR”
right to exist.
You talk, talk, talk about invisibility and then retreat to your homes
to nest with your lovers or carouse in a bar with pals and stumble home
in a cab or sit silently and politely by while your family, your boss,
your neighbors, your public servants distort and disfigure us, deride us
and punish us. Then home again and you feel like screaming. Then you pad
your anger with a relationship or a career or a party with other dykes
like you and still you wonder why we can’t find each other, why you feel
lonely, angry, alienated.
Your life is in your hands.
When I risk it all to be out, I risk it for both of us. When I risk it
all and it works (which it often does if you would try it), I benefit
and 50 do you. When it doesn’t work, I suffer and you do not.
But girl you can’t wait for other dykes to make the world safe for you.
STOP waiting for a better more lesbian future! The revolution could be
here if we started it.
Where are you sisters? I’m trying to find you, I’m trying to find you.
How come I only see you on Gay Pride Day?
We’re OUT. Where the fuck are YOU?
Right?
A crowd of 50 people exit a gay bar as it closes. Across the street,
some straight boys are shouting “Faggots” and throwing beer bottles at
the gathering. which outnumbers them by 10 to 1. Three queers make a
move to respond, getting no support from the group. Why did a group this
size allow themselves to be sitting ducks?
Tompkins Square Park, Labor Day. At an annual outdoor concert/drag show,
a group of gay men were harassed by teens carrying sticks. In the midst
of thousands of gay men and lesbians, these straight boys beat two gay
men to the ground, then stood around triumphantly laughing amongst
themselves. The emcee was alerted and warned the crowd from the stage,
“You girls be careful. When you dress up it drives the boys crazy,” as
if it were a practical joke inspired by what the victims were wearing
rather than a pointed attack on anyone and everyone at that event.
What would it have taken for that crowd to stand up to its attackers?[6]
After James Zappalorti, an openly gay man, was murdered in cold blood on
Staten Island this winter, a single demonstration was held in protest.
Only one hundred people came. When Yuseuf Hawkins, a black youth, was
shot to death for being on “white turf” in Bensonhurst. African
Americans marched through that neighborhood in large numbers again and
again.[7] A black person was killed BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK, and people of
color throughout the city recognized it and acted on it. The bullet that
hit Hawkins was meant for a black man, ANY black man. Do most gays and
lesbians think that the knife that punctured Zappalorti’s heart was
meant only for him?
The straight world has us so convinced that we are helpless and
deserving victims of the violence against us, that queers are
immobilized when faced with a threat. BE OUTRAGED! These attacks must
not be tolerated. DO SOMETHING. Recognize that any act of aggression
against any member of our community is an attack on every member of the
community. The more we allow homophobes to inflict violence, terror and
fear on our lives, the more frequently and ferociously we will be the
object of their hatred. You’re immeasurably valuable, because unless you
start believing that. it can easily be taken from you. If you know how
to gently and efficiently immobilize your attacker, then by all means,
do it. If you lack those skills, then think about gouging out his
fucking eyes, slamming his nose back into his brain, slashing his throat
with a broken bottle---do whatever you can, whatever you have to, to
save your life!
Queer!
Ah, do we really have to use that word? It’s trouble. Every gay person
has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric
and kind of mysterious. That’s okay, we like that. But some gay girls
and boys don’t. They think they’re more normal than strange. And for
others “queer” conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suffering.
Queer. It’s forcibly bittersweet and quaint at best- weakening and
painful at worst. Couldn’t we just use “gay” instead? It’s a much
brighter word and isn’t it synonymous with “happy”? When will you
militants grow up and get over the novelty of being different?
Well, yes, “gay” is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians
and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted. not gay.
So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using “queer” is a way of
reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It’s a way
of telling ourselves we don’t have to be witty and charming people who
keep our lives discreet and marginalized in the straight world. We use
queer as gay men loving lesbians and lesbians loving being queer.
Queer, unlike GAY, doesn’t mean MALE.
And when spoken to other gays and lesbians it’s a way of suggesting we
close ranks, and forget (temporarily) our individual differences because
we face a more insidious common enemy. Yeah, QUEER can be a rough word
but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe’s
hands and use against him.
For anyone to say that coming out is not part of the revolution is
missing the point. Positive sexual images and what they manifest saves
lives because they affirm those lives and make it possible for people to
attempt to live as self-loving instead of self- loathing. As the famous
“Black is beautiful” slogan changed many lives, so does “Read my lips”
affirm queerness in the face of hatred and invisibility as displayed in
a recent governmental study of suicides that states at least one third
of all teen suicides are Queer kids. This is further exemplified by the
rise in HIV transmission among those under 21.
We are most hated as queers for our sexualness, that is, our physical
contact with the same sex. Our sexuality and sexual expression are what
makes us most susceptible to physical violence. Our difference, our
otherness, our uniqueness can either paralyze us or politicize us.
Hopefully, the majority of us will not let it kill us.
Why in the world do we let heteros into queer clubs? Who gives a fuck if
they like us because we “really know how to party?” WE HAVE TO IN ORDER
TO BLOW OFF THE STEAM THEY MAKE US FEEL ALL THE TIME! They make out
wherever they please, and take up too much room on the dance floor doing
ostentatious couples dances. They wear their heterosexuality like a
“Keep Out” sign. or like a deed of ownership.
Why the fuck do we tolerate them when they invade our space like it’s
their right? Why do we let them shove heterosexuality-a weapon their
world wields against us- right in our faces in the few public spots
where we can be sexy with each other and not fear attack?
It’s time to stop letting the straight people make all the rules. Let’s
start by posting this sign outside every queer club and bar:
Rules of Conduct for Straight People
minimum. Your sexuality is unwanted and offensive to many here.
drag queens. We are not your entertainment.
pass at you, get out.
for a lezzie or a homo.
clubs, or:
I have friends. Some of them are straight.
Year after year, I see my straight friends. I want to see them. to see
how they are doing. to add newness to our long and complicated
histories, to experience some continuity. Year after year I continue to
realize that the facts of my life are irrelevant to them and that I am
only half listened to. that I am an appendage to the doings of a greater
world. a world of power and privilege, of the laws of installation. a
world of exclusion. “That’s not true,” argue my straight friends. There
is the one certainty in the politics of power: those left out of it beg
for inclusion. while the insiders claim that they already are. Men do it
to women, whites do it to blacks. and everyone does it to queers. The
main dividing line, both conscious and unconscious, is procreation ...
and that magic word — Family. Frequently, the ones we are born into
disown us when they find out who we really are, and to make matters
worse, we are prevented from having our own. We are punished, insulted,
cut off, and treated like seditionaries in terms of child rearing , both
damned if we try and damned if we abstain. It’s as if the propagation of
the species is such a fragile directive that without enforcing it as if
it were an agenda, humankind would melt back into the primeval ooze.
I hate having to convince straight people that lesbians and gays live in
a war zone, that we’re surrounded by bomb blasts only we seem to hear,
that our bodies and souls are heaped high, dead from fright or bashed or
raped, dying of grief or disease, stripped of our personhood.
I hate straight people who can’t listen to queer anger without saying
“hey, all straight people aren’t like that. I’m straight too, you know,”
as if their egos don’t get enough stroking or protection in this
arrogant. heterosexist world. Why must we take care of them, in the
midst of our just anger brought on by their fucked up society?! Why add
the reassurance of “Of course, I don’t mean you. You don’t act that
way.” Let them figure out for themselves whether they deserve to be
included in our anger.
But of course that would mean listening to our anger, which they almost
never do. They deflect it. by saying “I’m not like that” or “Now look
who’s generalizing” or “You’ll catch more flies with honey... “ or “If
you focus on the negative you just give out more power” or “you’re not
the only one in the world who’s suffering.” They say “Don’t yell at me,
I’m on your side” or “I think you’re overreacting” or “BOY, YOU’RE
BITTER.”
They’ve taught us that good queers don’t get mad. They’ve taught us so
well that we not only hide our anger from them, we hide it from each
other. WE EVEN HIDE IT FROM OURSELVES. We hide it with substance abuse
and suicide and overachieving in the hope of proving our worth. They
bash us and stab us and shoot us and bomb us in ever increasing numbers
and still we freak out when angry queers carry banners or signs that say
BASH BACK. For the last decade they let us die in droves and still we
thank President Bush for planting a fucking tree, applaud him for
likening PWAs to car accident victims who refuse to wear seatbelts. LET
YOURSELF BE ANGRY. Let yourself be angry that the price of our
visibility is the constant threat of violence, anti- queer violence to
which practically every segment of this society contributes. Let
yourself feel angry that THERE IS NO PLACE IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE WE ARE
SAFE, no place where we are not targeted for hatred and attack, the
self-hatred, the suicide — of the closet.
The next time some straight person comes down on you for being angry,
tell them that until things change, you don’t need any more evidence
that the world turns at your expense. You don’t need to see only hetero
couple grocery shopping on your TV... You don’t want any more baby
pictures shoved in your face until you can have or keep your own. No
more weddings, showers, anniversaries, please, unless they are our own
brothers and sisters celebrating. And tell them not to dismiss you by
saying “You have rights,” “You have privileges,” “You’re overreacting,”
or “You have a victim’s mentality.” Tell them “GO AWAY FROM ME, until
YOU can change.” Go away and try on a world without the brave, strong
queers that are its backbone, that are its guts and brains and souls. Go
tell them go away until they have spent a month walking hand in hand in
public with someone of the same sex. After they survive that. then
you’ll hear what they have to say about queer anger.
Otherwise, tell them to shut up and listen.
[1] AZT: azidothymidine is an anti·retroviral drug to suppress HIV.
[2] Jessie Helms was a five-term US senator from North Carolina well
known for conservative voting in support of institutional racism,
homophobia, sexism, censorship of nude art, etc.
[3] AIDS policy today is still institutionalized violence, though it has
become targeted less by sexuality and more by race and incarceration.
Black people are 13% of the US population but 49% of new HIV/AIDS
diagnoses. HIV/AIDS rates in prison are estimated to be more than 6
times the rates of the unincarcerated population (probably an
underestimate because not all states have compulsory reporting of
HIVI/AIDS in prison rates. Rates among women prisoners are as high as
10% of the population or more. Prisons in the US generally ban or
restrict access to condoms and other safer sex supplies.
[4] Ryan White became the poster-child of HIV/AIDS around 1985–7 because
he was infected through blood transfusions, not sex. because he was a
young, and because he was expelled from school for having HIY. Because
of Ryan White and straight people like Magic Johnson, HIV/AIDS became
“normalized:” and only then did it receive serious attention, especially
from the government.
[5] Probably a reference to sodomy laws that stood in about 25 US states
when this leaflet was written. Before the US Supreme Court ruled sodomy
law unconstitutional in 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas) it upheld the Georgia
sodomy law in 1986 (Bowers v. Hardwick)
[6] In a recent attack in Brooklyn, New York City, police officers beat
two lesbians of color in the street while yelling homophobic slurs. It
happened outside a bar with a crowd of over 100 queers watching. Then,
exactly 40 years after Stonewall, to the day, police raided a gay bar in
Fort Worth. Texas and beat and arrested people for no reason other than
being queer. No one fought back.
[7] Yusef Hawkins and 3 friends were attacked by a group of 10–30 white
youth in a largely Italian-American working-class neighborhood in
Brooklyn in 1989. Several of the white mob had baseball bats and one had
a handgun with which he shot and killed Yusef It was the third killing
of a black man by a white mob in New York in the 1980s. The protest
march nearly turned into a full-on riot. More marches happened in
response to the acquittal of one defendant on murder and manslaughter
charges.