In honour of #PrideTO and #BlackLivesMatterTO, I wanna direct everyone to Marsha P. Johnson.
The "angry", poor, Black, TRANSWOMAN who started the Stonewall riots. You know...the moment when the modern PRIDE / LGBTQ movement came into being? A place and moment so important that it got designated as a national monument to gay rights last month?
When people got tired of the Police fucking with them, because the SYSTEM refused to protect them from people that abused their power and honour their HUMANITY and their rights? Sound familiar?
Listen, I get that we live in a White Supremacist world, where hacks like Roland Emmerich whitewashed the shit out of Stonewall and justified it because "I'm making a movie for White people".
You see the Black guy to the left with the scarf on his head? That's supposed to be Marsha P. Johnson. The transperson (that just looks like a bad Jimi Hendrix impersonator here), who actually threw the first brick that incited the riot. Reduced to a background character to the "real" star of the show...a fictionalized "straight acting", White, midWestern teen named "Danny".
Think about that for a minute.
When you're bitching about what #BLMTO did yesterday remember....those ANGRY, BLACK, LGBTQ people who held up that parade yesterday...are the spiritual successors to the ANGRY, BLACK, LGBTQ woman who started it all. #KnowYourselves
p.s. I have PLENTY of cops who are friends (my buddy even defended the cop who shot Sammy Yatim...he is his lawyer). This is about a SYSTEMIC problem. So miss me with that #AllLivesMatter shit. In the eyes of the SYSTEM some lives matter wayyyyyy less. What#BlackLivesMatter did was HEROIC. They didn't accept the pacification of their movement with a "respectable" embrace. They said FUCK YOU, NO PRIDE FOR SOME OF US WITHOUT LIBERATION FOR ALL OF US! And THAT is what PRIDE is about!
KB