fifty years ago at the stonewall bar in new york gay pride took the form of a riot not a parade today the question remains as relevant as ever just how do we define love is love and what are we willing to do to defend one another this week i we have come a long way from a riot against police on the streets of new york's greenwich village now just known as stonewall to many around the world that night in one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine is recognized as the launch of the m rights movement from gay marriage in the recognition of l g b t families to the movement for transgender rights progress has been made where we have yet to go and when it comes to liberation the cry of those early rioters many of them young trans poor people of color what we need to do next there is still no federal law against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and many l g b people continue to live in fear and experience violence even death in their countries throughout the world and right here in light of that instead of looking back fifty years and sixty nine we're going to look forward one hundred where will we be in twenty  nine for that conversation we've convened a great group my friend scott not to go a long time community organizer senior partner of change lab brian m disability activist and pod cast host of power not pity check it photo director of the r d j a refugee center in harlem and kaz mitchell co executive director of circle of voices inc well we have a lot on the table but we have  one hundred years to think about so let's start with stonewall what's its resonance to you cats want to start and being a new york i've heard so many stories about how wonderful it was and how it gave us such a voice but then i heard from some of my elders of color or they would say back then african american and they felt left out pretty much from story or the cris attucks ism of only one of us being there so that was a real touching moment for me and what about you scott well i worked for many years in the l g b t q movement and it's a reference point for people you know people look back on that time it represented a moment of liberation a very different kind of politics than i understood myself to be promoting when i was leaving and some organizing through the national at the time national gay and lesbian task force and so yeah it was kind of a touchstone for people you know something that reminds us where we started the matter where we go we began there in a riot and what about you bright well i mean i guess as a younger person can say that stonewall was definitely like a touchstone moment but also i feel as though you know thinking about who threw the  cocktail is something that people don't remember and people my age don't even think about as a riot how about hearing about stonewall it did stumble mean something to you growing up in nigeria be like americans do you remember when where you were to the phrase or word stonewall which is a really the name of a nightclub still yeah i had about stonewall just when i came to america before i came to america and distant and being a history that we don't really acknowledge i mean the history has i don't know when you want to fill in the story a little bit but the history was not the history of white gay men saying we would like our rights please right there was a story of being there and and saying maybe i threw the st punch but just the pictures of what evolved from the conversation show groups of people just enjoying new york city like that and then someone disrupted them and i said when that want to take it anymore someone being the cops who had raided the place many times very brutally in a very short period of time but had a habit of doing exactly that to all the gay and lesbian love that's been our history even in philadelphia city of brotherly love a lot of people left the law delphia because of that same type of police action insemination of the gave up the stonewall the documentary directed by john scott b r t chronicles the history of lesbian and gay life from the riots of stonewall to the end of the th century in the wake of the stonewall riots and the sudden invasion people into our movement a good invasion a number of organizations starting in new york and spreading to other cities called gay liberation front will happen that just seems a sort of logical progression from actually leftist radical politics and i joined gay liberation front right away after stonewall we were front like the vietnamese liberation front from whom we got our name reveals how this movement has attempted to grow up and effective just sort of adding extra letters what do you think broad well i mean i'm sort of a person who thinks that visibility is more than letters and i think visibility is not really a site of liberation or transformation so i think although we enough fifty eight years old now i remember when it was incredibly controversial even to name lesbian and gay the national gay and lesbian task force actually started as a national gay task force and then added lesbian and over time slowly added more and more groups  in order to try to represent the broad spectrum of the community but the controversies we went through the original marches on washington for instance where there was argument about whether or not trans people could march by our side there were organizations national organizations that refused to name gay or lesbian in their time and their names because they felt like their constituents wouldn't want to receive mail you know so it is something to me this change is a remarkable thing it's not nearly enough but it at least gives us some leverage what do you think well i think it's good in a way because it shows a sense of expressionism but i worry about funding you know i try to tell some of the you know folks you queer but that might not be on a form so we might not be able to quantify that data because you're a stand so we have to work together on some different idea and fill us in on some of the people that you work with and the work that you do w circle voices was found it visually as a woman of color music festival because the others back then weren't quite cultural so the fact what do you mean it was all white well that's just a real  that our friends in the community know they can get culturally competent health care services that they need so they can express the art is still true that lesbians and all the more so lesbians of color and even all them also lesbian of colors with this ability to access the least health care in the country i think yes that cystic show that even with cancer there may be more white women diagnosed but the death rate of most diseases will show that women of color especially black african american have the highest rate of deaths because by the time they get to the hospital they're in serious condition or close to death and i think lesbians tend to go less often oh yes because of lack of trust how am i going to be treated by the color of my skin by the texture of my hair and then i'm gay on top of that you might just kill me or experiment and some of the routine health care the women who are bearing children or who are thinking about bearing children get aren't bearing children don't go into hospital for contraceptions and for birth related parenting related reasons unless they having kids so i think some of those statistics are still pretty shocking a but i have them out of my head it and the lived experiences of the civil people of color so i think in talking about foreigner ability did you know that the stonewall actually rejected blind person from entering  year ago because they had their service animal and you know that is like a definitely vulnerable position of being right but i think like another thing about one ability is that they  people often find themselves constantly vulnerable especially if you're a queer disabled person well i want to say that history is history and the past is past and scott after space has spent many years fighting the far right and so patriot movement the militia movements that for years manipulated among other things homophobia and fears of gay and lesbian people to cultivate violent movements look we can say all that's possible god right  some incredible fights how can we have come so far on the one hand been such a beacon to people around the world in the way that our face mentioning be celebrating now this fifty years and still have on our hands everything that you're just describing identity is a very tricky issue especially in america before i came to america i didn't know that i was a black person so when i came to america i discovered a difference is between the old beauty community just to discrimination and although i don't want no fi a standing that's important just saying ally ship doesn't make much difference and you have to be trusted but was things that i know as a person over fifty that racism and discrimination has always been there i was just been on the pot simmering and now that we have this other person running our country has released some of that energy out give people this empowered sense that they can go back to that bridges because money speaks for everything in this world if you don't have the money you're going to be left out you will lose your voice you know it's not often and says there's a whole lot of other people's finances if you want to ask me is capitalism the problem well capitalism is one of the problems for sure you know but we should remember what came before and what we might be walking into next which might be a much uglier form of economy even disaster capitalism disaster capitalism of all of archaea of you know so of the world return of chattel slavery you know incredible networks of human trafficking that we're facing all of these things that are happening in this so called liberated environment you know when i think of stonewall i think of a time when people stood up  them out of many one but you know sounds lovely but it was a very kind of course unity so people people of color women many groups of people decided to step up and say no no no no we are many in our voices will all be heard and we cannot have this sort of negotiated peace based on the course unity that you know we had here in the united states now we are in the process of negotiating what that means you know so how do how do we then move forward do we move forward together or do we have to move forward separately these are the kind of critical questions i think we're facing the white nationalists you mention are actually putting up one kind of challenge we have to answer their challenge and say what we want this to be in the future so for change to put in  it really true that everybody comes out to gay pride and the moment be stays the pride parade is more about a kind of i mean at least the official pride parade is kind of a i don't know a parade of commercial commercially sponsored floats because you want to push back a little well it isn't away but circle of voices was in the parade last year we got our full because one of the rules is if you do have a sponsor the fees go up so we paid for it ourselves and those women said they never knew what it was like to receive all the love going through this street people reaching and you saw the unicef's and you saw the police trying to dance with know that they could dance with you the ones that are gay because there is a gay component in new york city police department call gay office i mean i'm just want to stop because you use the word love which i i really want us to use as we look to the future because to me what set the l g b t liberation movement pineries across you know conveniences and they fight like hack the people they love and if we're going to put forward i'm on a soapbox now but if we're going to put forward any vision i think it is a vision of love being one another across those various areas and i want to add something to the conversation honestly because i find that pride is usually you know all about homogeny eighty and you know i want to include the voices of disabled people queer disabled people the same people of color trans the sable people the fact that we are invisible completely invisible and pride is completely inaccessible and the parties that happen are also inaccessible we have to figure out ways so what would be some of those way of now we're finally getting to looking ahead fifty years or what would a society that put love as the st value happy as it sounds first look like for you for example oh definitely well you know i i believe access is love and i want to believe a world a stonewall that's fully accessible you know i go on the web site i went on the web today check out if they have access to will accessibility they have nothing there about accessibility they have nothing there for the about a bar or for that i go to the bar or the president right or other pride parties that are available to you honestly i think that when we think about the future we have to think about all types of bodies we have to think about moving together not just one person moving alone not just one movement moving alone you know kalu collective liber is about all and i find that the sable people are often left out of the conversation and i i really want to change that scott i know you're going to give me a reality check here well no i actually do believe in love and i believe that people join social movements because they're looking for love you know they're looking for recognition and respect they want you know it's if you're hungry there are better ways of getting fed than joining a march to demand dignity for your family you know what you're look at what drives you to that moment love and i think that we need to build on that for me love is a sept answer sharon because when i came out as gay it was very difficult for me i didn't see anybody that looks like me i would say go to the club because we know where the clothes are and see the ramp or duran that's not there and try to get one in and that's what circle of voices founder did she went to music festival didn't like it so she created one with all the is that her people aspire to and that's what i want to see in one hundred years from heaven aware and that we have a all loving group of people that they're to gather that are working together and every voice let it be heard in some way and reeducate and show the importance of philanthropic support don't always take from the not for profit if you have a blessing one day give a dollar do that not for profit this mean giving you metro card for three or four years because every penny counts lost were brought oh definitely so i think that yes love is all about think care of each other recognizing when you know but i also think that love is also about recognizing when something is happening that you are not ok with and changing that and some way acting with people who are like you and deciding that you want to change the world i think that love it's also about recognizing difference and recognizing that we can create a more equitable world by changing our what we're complicit in and honestly i think i think that the stonewall itself and the institution that it represents is complicit in able ism and i mean i don't know what it's going to be like in fifty years but i