@ Creating Change 2010: 40 Years After Stonewall

I’m a little late with this post, but I couldn’t skip covering my favorite panel I attended at Creating Change. The history we hear the most is written by power. Hearing the stories of our communities from those elders who actually lived them is a powerful way to maintain a knowledge of our truth and our struggles.
Tom Weber from SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders) organized the panel, “40 Years After Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Activist Timeline,” with Jim Fouratt, Roger Goodman, Carmen Vasquez, Ellen Ensig-Brodsky, Phil Johnson. Some of these speakers participated in the Stonewall uprising, and all of them have seen moments in TBLG history that must not be lost. Their stories tell us of our challenges, but also of our potential.
I was in tears during this entire panel. There is no way a few quotes can convey the experience of hearing queer history from those who lived it, but I hope this post adds a little something to our collective memory of struggles and community building. Some highlights from the panel after the jump.

Jim Fouratt: I never use the term “Stonewall riot.” Riot implies it wasn’t organized. I call it an uprising.
An army of lovers cannot be defeated.
Gender has always been the front line of most of our political battles. And the effeminate man is still not wanted in the room.
We’re all fags at the end of the day to the homophobes. But in our own community there’s this demonizing of the sissy, the effeminate male.
Roger Goodman: “An army of lovers cannot be defeated” Comes from a group of gay Spartan soldiers – also where we got the lamda.
A riot has no core to it, it’s just chaos, and this was not chaos, it had a core to it. What changed for me is I found community. The thing that the Stonewall rebellion did for me was to remove shame.
There was a coalescing of the queer community in New York City. I think that community became an impetus for other communities that we became.
[Speaking about the early days of the AIDS epidemic] I was living in a community of compassion. That community of love and compassion that happened in the 80s and 90s couldn’t have happened if Stonewall hadn’t happened. Except at Creating Change I don’t feel a community anymore.
I’m here now because I was at the Stonewall rebellion, or I couldn’t be here. It formed me into who I am today.
The effeminist movement – It was men in the 1970s who took feminism on as our politic. We called gay men on their shit. Effeminism is gay men whose fundamental politics is feminism. And that we’re not afraid to feel the feminine in us and express that.
Carmen Vasquez: I believe like my colleagues who were at Stonewall that we’ve moved away from that authenticity and we need that authenticity. We forgot that Stonewall was about defending our desire. They were inspired by the civil rights movement. They weren’t defending an equality agenda, they were defending a liberation agenda, they were defending their desire.
We refused to leave anyone behind. We are not that movement. We have in fact left many people behind.
To continue to present the sanitized message with white people at the front [is false.]
[Regarding the millions raised for gay marriage campaigns] Where are the millions to address institutional racism in the movement?
It is possible for men and women to be warriors together for justice. It is possible for white people and people of color to work together, we’ve done it before. It is possible for lesbian and gay and bisexual and transgender people to work together for justice.
Ellen Ensig-Brodsky: I think I’m a lesbian because I’m from the Bronx.
This was my political movement – I went from Long Island into The Duchess. And I was liberated.
Phil Johnson: We existed before Stonewall.
Don’t take your stories to the grave. Write them down, give them to the local archives. Because a hundred years from now people are going to want to know what it was like to be gay in those old days.