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A Stonewall OG Viciously Attacked By TRAs
The Stonewall Riots, also called the Stonewall Uprising, began in the early hours of June 28, 1969 when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets and in nearby Christopher Park. The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
The 1960s and preceding decades were not welcoming times for lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans. For instance, solicitation of same-sex relations was illegal in New York City.
For such reasons, LGB individuals flocked to gay bars and clubs, places of refuge where they could express themselves openly and socialize without worry. However, the New York State Liquor Authority penalized and shut down establishments that served alcohol to known or suspected LGB individuals, arguing that the mere gathering of homosexuals was “disorderly.”
When Fred Sargeant came upon the first night of the Stonewall riots on his way home from dinner with friends, he was already more than familiar with the issue of mafia-run gay bars and police raids. Sargeant was closely involved with the work of his partner, gay rights pioneer Craig Rodwell, who had opened Greenwich Village's Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in 1967.
Sargeant and Rodwell returned to the Stonewall Inn for "every night of the rioting," Sargeant said. And Rodwell "started organizing around it right away. Trying to get the press to cover the story, trying to get other people, including some Mattachine members, to come downtown." Rodwell also wrote leaflets and distributed them in the Village. "The leaflets were all pretty much on the same theme," said Sargeant, "about the cops and the corruption and the mafia operating the bars and how gay people were getting caught in the middle." After the riots, while Sargeant went to many of the open meetings "to see what people were talking about doing," he didn't join any of the new groups.
"At a series of meetings that summer we talked about how to bring about something different," Sargeant explained. In 1965, Rodwell had proposed the July 4th "Annual Reminder" gay and lesbian protest marches in Philadelphia, and he and Sargeant were committed to an anniversary march in New York City to commemorate the Stonewall riots. Soon after, Rodwell, Sargeant and a handful of other activists formed the Christopher Street Liberation Day Coordinating Committee to plan for New York City's first annual Gay Pride March in June 1970.
And this is who TRAs viciously attacked, at all places, a Pride Parade in Burlington, Vermont.
According to Fred (with whom I just spoke to a little while ago), he was surrounded by a group of TRAs who severely limited his movement and the TRAs claim that Fred was hitting them with his cane and elbow.
”They're claiming that I hit them with my cane and elbow. They were pressed up against me so contact was unavoidable.”
The attack itself necessitated a trip to the hospital and a CAT scan of his cranium to see if there was any resulting injury caused by his being pushed to the ground.
As of this writing, Fred says he’s “sore” but he’s okay.
This is the fifth version of this newsletter I have written on this because the other four had me spitting mad, so mad that I am still tempted to entertain some violent thoughts but, rather than give these grievance gerbils more grist for their mill, I have decided that the best course of action I can take is to insult them.
Allow me to be very clear about this:
You little faggots.
Yeah, that’s exactly what you are.
No, you don’t get to call me a homophobe because gay men like Fred, and other gay men (with the exception of David Paisley) I respect.
You, on the other hand, are faggots. You’re not even properly homosexual, you don’t have that kind of gravitas.
What you have just done is a slap in the face to an entire community that was kind enough to let you in when they had no reason to and they especially have every reason to show your asses the door.
Whatever little goodwill you had marginally engendered over time is now squandered with this senseless attack on Fred Sargeant.
In case you haven’t made it clear, allow me: the gay community has no option other than to fight the cult that you are at every turn as you have now bared your asses as the homophobes we always knew you were.
It was Fred Sargeant who paved the way for you by putting his ass on the front lines and struggling so you little pieces of shit could thank him by knocking him to the ground!
Fred Sargeant is the kind of man whose boots you are not fit to lick.
I always said you should just keep doing what you’re doing and, Jesus, you didn’t disappoint me.
Nothing to see , move along now