and we are kicking off our coverage of it with a and our panel discussion with people involved in various angles of it so i guess i should start on my immediate left eric marcus is the author of making gay history making history here a regional look ok but the producer of the making gay history dad or pod cast now in its fourth year sound from thirty years ago and next to him is martin boyce and original stonewall veteran you were there the nights of the riots he's going to tell us all about that carla jay also an original member of the gay liberation front as well as red stockings radical lesbians and a professor emeritus from pace university author of many books including the gay report with alan young lesbians and gay men speak out about sexual experiences and lifestyles and that was not done yesterday karla and jamie adams who is the park ranger in charge of the stonewall national monument down in sheridan square on christopher street welcome to all of you thank you for joining us thank you so margo and i think you were there the first night so we should start with you tell us what happened ok first night was how old we were at the time i was but twenty and it was the beginning of our week and it was sad for some people because to recall and had passed away and we all went to see  her that night during the weekend we would go to stonewall very late and we had plans and that would be with your we would do but on my way to stone wall i met a friend who said you're not getting i is not a full drag scandrick if any image could come to mind i would say boy george they would think you were girl for a second a minute and then reality would come which was fine with me because it wasn't so much an identity for me it was a protest you know right so and these people too so we were talking about what to do now we're not going to get to stonewall it was a pity because the music was great i wanted to dance but someone behind me there were crowds always but said this is going to be interesting no stone what i went there and sure enough they had just taken the drag queens out because i heard she hears and i knew that well this is going to be interesting been so oppressed but we didn't we didn't talk to each other we were little this all took a step towards him i could see that his on his deco up he turned around to really say it down but he didn't say it i don't know what we look like but whatever it was it was in his eyes what he saw and he called and bring in our section the right was on because provocation  provocation for everybody enough provocation in the whole semi circle to cause the right everywhere and all the sudden everything went crazy we went for them and it was very fierce because we almost felt as if our presses  guards that duck out were now by consensus under our control and that usual false sense of power and i think we just wanted to hurt them in every which way possible and there showing a moment of vulnerability treated as a teenager growing up in new york yes i mean gay bashing was a sport because you know in your neighborhood you know new york in those years you lived in a neighborhood like a village for maybe thirty forty years people that there so to be labeled k a horrible destiny you know for me it wasn't so bad because you see my mother was an invalid so everyone they try to give an excuse if they could if they lied to not a single game i was peculiar my mother you know my father couldn't  i knew i had to listen because it if i don't always listen to from a child because i don't what the trend is to be straight let me learn not to lift a pinky if someone said look at your nails go like this don't like that and i mean i find this this idea of bahrain as spectacle is so interesting because for me which were prevalent in the lesbian community as well the idea of a bar it was terrifying in many respects for one thing in most of these bars the back doors were padlocked so there was no way out if there was a bar raid if there was a fire you were trapped in there and if the police arrested you in the bar raid and got your identification which it was a no win situation if you didn't have identification they were going to take you away if you did have identification they would then use that identification to ruin your life even though they might neither arrest you if you were wearing gender correct clothing  then they might call your school call your employer call somebody and tell them that you were a lesbian and you were found in this bar they had rain that and your life would be ruined even without having been arrested without having been booked tried without anything your life was over so for me you know the idea that could be something interesting to watch  front i was involved in the student uprising as a columbia university in the spring of one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and then i joined the women's movement because the men there columbia's thought that women should be involved in making sandwiches for so i quickly left the old left moved on to the red stockings brand stockings felt that the personal is political unless you're a lesbian and then the personal was personal there myself is that i did get myself down to the gay liberation front shortly after they started meeting about a month later commemorate the uprisings with marching a year later i don't think that anybody would be celebrating the stonewall now it was really another sad you know illegal immigrant and when he was taken to the tenth precinct he jumped out of the second story window landed on a spite fence the the fire department came and had to blowtorch the fen drinks but still we know that it could have been but we didn't think it would happen because we're young kids nothing was wrong no they came in the lights went on we had to stop dancing a detective came in looked in each of our faces he looked like touch of evil he was supposed to terrorize us with the cigar and it was all silly but they did it i mean they just relentless but the spirit of stonewall because the world of good will to change between  telling people more or less to go home and settle down and this all came you know on the tail of the civil rights movement the women's movement and things and i am as you're pointing out more things were to they go to ask you about what happened did stumble or they say who the hell are you what are you doing here it's a mix of both some people may have already heard it was designated as a national monument so they came specifically looking for either the arrowhead the same kind of thing they did they get the statue of liberty or the grand canyon or yellowstone or the you know up in seneca for the women's rights but it's just a little corner of this little park so it's really not about you know preserving the park it's really preserving guest the park as well but preserving the story and so when people approach me and want to know what on earth i'm doing there i immediately have to launch into that story and what you said tell them well again i have to gauge the audience so it's a mix it really is you get you get these very conservative seeming very straight same in families that are traveling to all the different national parks for the summer and just again want to want to get that chance and a lot of those folks do it because they know that for some reason the u s government at some point say oh this is something worth preserving and so even if i don't know anything about it my kids should learn from this range nice so they know and we have incentives to help you know you learn we have the junior ranger program so it's a special badge and so we're finally going to have that for twenty one thousand which is expected by a lot of national park fans but we also have people who just want to come and see stonewall or they want to come and see you know the gay liberation monument within the park because they hurt us that your original stone will bore in the original bore you know do tell them that was of i do depending on how much time i have with people and where their interest seem to lie we can really get into these things as we pointed out when we fought for the stonewall body and it wasn't so much about the bar because the bar's really not part of it it's the streets because that's where the rebellion happened in the streets yes i think it that there was this particular board there were that particular board but what people like him did what we did there for two months well ahead of anything as a horn uprising as it is good to have and it's kind of funny the way it worked out because the word stone wall is now so symbolic you know and so of course when they did the designation that's what they were latching on to they know they weren't really watching on to necessarily the bar but you know we have different pride celebrations internationally that either use christopher street or stone wall and they cling to these terms of may not even know exactly where where that name is coming from and of course i have to mention that there's confusion from those very conservative folks that may not know anything and they do i could imagine because this was a bunch of fake rebellion i didn't think would and i did the white house at any point well and in fact one of fear or interviewees vito russo who we have a small audio clip from talks about how he had no idea where this was going to lead so maybe we can play that little clip from peter russo who i knew later and act up and author of the cellulite closet but he was there hanging out in the tree so perfect and well the first march was not cool stonewalls wait wait it was called christian first read liberation day committee and we called it the christopher street gay liberation march so there would been a different kind of branding was out the name of the bar and in fact the gay liberation front which arose out of the ashes of stonewall you know stonewall lit a fire at the gay liberation front little torch and then carry that torch the following year zero six seven they went to the park and the momentum of the game liberation front was to get people  bars the bars along with the police department the bars were oppressing us they were in collusion with the police department in terms of having those sort of arrested and there is also evidence now the bars were involved in shaking down the patrons to get money out of them to to get some of these patrons who worked on wall street to turn over bonds in those materials so that organize which were run almost exclusively by organized crime primarily by the genovese crime family at least this is where scholars say these these places were no other friends we as people back then had no choice there were no coffee houses we had no center we had no consciousness raising groups so many people have a choice if you want to go to a bar that's great but to not have a choice any place on earth where you can meet that's why they have us and so i think that's really important to remember that we're only groups we're trying to get people out of places like the stonewall this is not to disparage them today i think they're important and they're they play an important part of the time a lot of good schmidt who was like eighteen years old i believe at the time when he was there he said one of the reasons stonewall was we were so angry that stonewall was taken from us because it was one of the few places we could dance and touch you know in the bar because they all day and i heard david rothenberg talk about this was in his eighty's now he said he was in a bar and he was talking to a guy and he put his hand on other guy's hand just to talk to him and they threw him out of the bar just for that level of touch so things changed but it was a matter of turf you know story and everybody had turf and people had no turf to butch to let the person know either move across the street or could turn back krista she was accomplished didn't have to do that there was such safety in numbers you did not to look behind you it was hard turf we finally had a place where this because these street queens of course would never have made an organization like you did or could do that but they did like the torch to pass it needed because they were so desperate we did go to the better she decided once fourteen of us i  for one thing let me say this because i heard the same thing about bread starkings and the radical women's groups i was we did not set up these organizations to exist in so we as l g b t q a and on and on even though we were pressed by other people in the same way we didn't have that much in common so street trans transvestites action revolutionaries there was a group called the famine this they went off and they formed their collective in one off there were many groups that went off including g m this know where their group's faith is or continue to exist the group has served its function and ga did form at the in december of nine hundred sixty nine and continues to exist for a few years and  and sylvia rivera who work in the streets and there are no longer with us and they were very significant there so talk about them and maybe bring in some of their actualities here because one of the things we don't have is people of here my reaction to sylvia about the coins several people had told me about the coins grown up and i didn't understand why so when he says the payoff the payoff you know there is some question as to whether sylvia was actually there mean in one nine hundred eighty two they closed the two biggest lesbian bars in new york because that was just a vendetta against lesbians and we have huge demonstrations and we didn't get anywhere with the government that's supposed to be more responsive to us and then there was the raid on the by the for apology from the new york city police department in the city of new york and there are still be using gay people in this and it is still not easy you know i work with no alternatives for homeless be to you for a transgender woman of color especially to walk down the street in new york without just being arrested as a as a prostitute when that they're just being themselves not doing anything they just get arrested still happens and i'm going to be one of the boldest of the pok ra protesting because the they were releasing the records of people who said that they were gay yes  story because your personal story is woven into this too you were in the coast guard you were serving in the years of don't ask don't tell so talk to us about that and how that all resonates with sure  o i was i was i was identifying as as clear when i was eighteen years old but i also knew that i didn't want to go to college and knew that i needed to figure something out so i joined the coast guard and  remember a document you know part of the entry process to the military at the time up until the end of don't ask don't tell there was this document that actually explicitly states how you can not at all express any be closeted in and it was fine through basic training but then i got when i was doing search and rescue on the oregon coast in a town of less than five hundred people and they and i all i could think about was my ex girlfriend so yes so i spent the entire time active duty really working hard to to to prove to everyone around me that i was just as good for the job as they were but always for this guilt in this burden  affected me quite negatively for a long time i got out with an honorable discharge and went on to serve in a variety of government jobs and always wanted to be a park ranger and luckily became one and was working at different historic sites around manhattan when i started to hear that this stone wall national monument could maybe happen or some kind of mine for gay rights and did this movement have any meaning for you during all this time were you aware of it  ecause we always wonder for people who are not actively involved in the movement why aren't they a more out there or why aren't they joining or why and i get the sense of this great disconnect absolutely up so i am i'm a military brat i've moved around my whole life so i spent nineteen years in south america and so while i was going through my own self discovery i was i was quite closeted up until  my time after the coast guard who knew of the gay people in the military i mean i didn't you do i did not know i had heard of someone did you did you hear homophobia in the right absolutely you do oh absolutely absolutely daily that's part of it was part of the culture unfortunately so yeah it created quite a bit of fear for me but when i when i finally started to have more self discovery time after the coast guard and started to date women i found  the story of struggle as far is the movement is concerned and then years later when i ended up coming to new york for and different government one of the first places i went was the stonewall because it really is a rite of passage still for for so many people well we're going to try to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of stonewall with a civil rights march on june thirtieth that's why we have the reclaim pride coalition and we're working on that we're working to build that but i to ask the veterans here and that's why we're all veterans do you think we're further along than you expected back in the day when you got started or not as far as we should be from what you expected both because you know our struggle which is not finished is also global you know very important i mean i myself have to keep one eye on the news around the world because i find it very helpful if the rest of the world comes with us it's said to look at a map that's only colored to a certain extent free and not for so many i mean this taiwan situation was disappointing you know but people voted against you know all these such a nation as you want to call them uganda and places like that even the vatican to making these ugandan children saints their famous within the catholic church for refusing to sleep with move was to show that these boys didn't give how shocked i feel like some of the people i interviewed who talked about feeling like dinosaurs when i interviewed them in their seventy's and eighty's because they couldn't believe how much it changed and they couldn't adjust they have tried hard time adjusting to the new world and the new rules and find that i still look over my shoulder thinking that someone is behind me i still suffer from my own internalized homophobia and i marvel at young people today who grow who are growing up in a very different world i'm thrilled by the change and i think that these are the best of times in most ways given where we were there was a time when i was interviewed in the late eighties after my book from the couple's guide was published and i was asked if i thought that gay people would ever be able to marry miss it never not as long as i did not in my lifetime you know wh way eric said you know it and one of the first meetings we sat around and we said what do we want and someone said oh i'd like to be able to walk down the street and way at the federal laws after the first pride march and one of the things we're was also have kind of marriages which were not legally binding however that was an area in which we have at least ten for temporarily succeeded but i don't know if we succeeded in there are other civil rights agenda and one of the things that we draw from the old other organizations when we were involved back then and we came out of these other movements like the anti war movement and we came out of the women's movement we were alone lined with these other groups and we care th the struggle of black people in this country and that means what black pain had meetings with the black panthers we raised money for the black panthers it was very controversial we went to earth back then and we care about all of these different groups and to the only people are very much on track with one organization and that concerns me because well if we have l g marriage the gay rights ordinance quite a shock to the system we formed a coalition for let anything get rights and we got labor unions and we got african american groups and women's groups and we don't we didn't all work together we did try to keep that going for a long time but those were the days when we weren't paid like in the early d and it became less dynamic and different animal and i wonder whether you look back on those years fifty years ago and sort of yearn for that energy and that i had a problem lavender menace you know what we took over there conference coming or however you know one of the things we said in the women's movement is you cannot measure pain and you can measure other people's pain and throughout all the time in the women's movement one of the things i learned in the g o f was that people like sylvia rivera and marcia p johnson who lived on the street and and to know that so many people in this country and around the world has such a more difficult time than i had and then i even though i was always struggling for myself that i had to  struggle for these other people as well and i i would like to i think today for us to you know as we think of the fiftieth anniversary to think of these other group as groups as well in this country because we are seeing other groups being beaten every day in the streets particularly african american men being transgender women being killed in the street we have to be there for other groups in addition to being there for people we see just as are so and i think maybe the feeling of today's movement is a lack of empathy for people who are not in just practical terms because if we are isolated in our own silo we are giving up a lot of strength yes and that's what the people in power want they want us to be divided into our own little pods and not talking to each other and not working with h other so i think just in practical terms whether you feel that but they are not and i would like people to feel empathy but i will appeal to them on practical more grounds to say if you want to make progress if you want to overturn the hideous power structure or whatever or accomplish anything we have to work together that is where we gain power and i think most people have the right attitude in their hearts i remember during the stonewall right the most thing i'm most proud about that ride as memory was that all the straight people that were trapped in it well god you know this was a riot against the police from the street the men of suits whoever was fighting all of us  are i got to say i'd like to i'd like to know specifically for kids you know what it is that if there was one thing that you could say to all the l g b t q plus youth center out there because there's this interesting thing that's happened with all this progress it's gone so fast that we have these wonderful queer identifying children that actually don't know about the struggle and i have a task that i now have to let them know just how hard it was not that long ago yesterday for for for us for me it was valor we were always denied a chance to show valor and men love this just men but the history of the idea of valor and battles and all this and that was not a part of us want documentary i said in the end of it you know i was a man you know even though i was just a big fairy but that was important there was a great deal of valor in it and that the power of its own there was no leadership but certain people knew to go out and get more ammunition showing people who take the street people out it was an amazing sense of valor and battle and when the morning came i was exhausted like a gladiator and but nonetheless that career started these young people don't know or history and they don't know how people of our generation suffered and the things that we had to go to for example the way i am dressed right now in the one nine hundred sixty nine i would have been considered a transvestite because the unisex clothing that i might be wearing today did not exist and so if life front for example was considered men's clothing so in one thousand sixty nine i was a man you know today i'm a woman and that kind of thing that they don't know the degree to which people were oppressed stonewall that this was valiant when i had students i mean one of the big changes i saw over the forty years later the pace university was that my students were became l g b t q and their parents sexual identity these and they came to believe that these things were a given and they forgot that these rights were part of a process but also that we don't as and his point earlier we really don't have these rights that these things are not really encoded into law and these are very tenuous things that we have and to morrow they could disappear and they're disappearing today and we're going to be right back where we were and then it's important to come out not just once a year but to give something to the movement at least once a week if you can give one hour a week if you can give ten dollars a week whatever it is that you can give to our movement that you can give to there are people in our movement we can all do it and we can all come out to everybody come out to another person do something and that's what people really push it makes me very sad to see that people still come out one day a year at the end and the rest of the year maybe someone knows but not everyone we're still at the very beginning point of history gay studies or gay interest but it is american history and you have to look far to see it there are lots of stories that include our stories but having been taught the red scare included the lavender scare because gay people were fired from their jobs in the  fifty s as a matter of law from federal for federal jobs so i think it is important for all of us to work on that aspect of the movement which is education so these kids come to you not knowing the truth of course they don't know because they haven't been taught and we work to the hundred martin institute and went into the schools but in terms of systemic change in the schools it was there was total resistance and we're not going to talk about this you can talk to guidance counselors you can talk to student but not systemic but what i found in that work we did permission to ask questions that are not informed to be ignorant but curious they really are just soaking it up  report the we worked with the new york city department of education and the national parks conservation association not actually national park service but a separate group we all came together the stonewall inn actually offered us space without alcohol being served and we had school groups come as a pilot program this fall there are two hundred forty gender and sexuality alliance like afterschool programs around new york city public schools so they are all there untapped waiting to learn and so we were able to bring these kids in this fall and they got to go into the bar they got to meet one another socialize with one another from different groups you know how important that must be for for gay kids and then we we were able to do some interpretation and get them to know their history and i have to cut you off because we're at the end of our time but that's a nice positive note to end on thank you marcus thank you barton voice thank you karla j thank you jamie and thank you all for watching