Located in Greenwich Village gays were not the only people found in the bar during the 60’s. Like many gay bars, Stonewall was owned by members of the Mafia, who were capable of skirting around the red tape often thrown in the way for gay establishments seeking liquor licenses (Dana). The mafia didn’t mind the gay or the queens filling their bar, and began to build friendships with them. Police, however, were highly against the idea of gay bars, and could barge into them without direct reason. That’s
Assess the impact of the Stonewall Riots On Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Liberation as well as its effects the LGBT community as a whole. The Stonewall Riots were a series of violent protests against police harassment by the Gay community of New York City in 1969. While not planned; a spur of the moment uprising, the riots managed to explain to the world that the gay community are oppressed, and that we were not going to take it anymore. While not the beginning of the fight for homosexual rights, with demonstrations and other violent protests happening within America during the decades up until the ’69 riots. They affected great change in the mentality and approach of the then gay liberation movement.
Stonewell Riots and the impact on the Gay Community The Stonewell riot took place in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969. It was a turning point for homosexual’s equality. Though activism and advocacy did exist before Stonewall, it was limited and rare. It was also often confined to larger cities like New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. The homophile organization like the Mattachine society and Daughter of Bilitis was making only small progress before the Stonewall riots.
Throughout society’s existence, members of the LGBT community have battled oppression, faced intolerance, and dealt with immense prejudice, yet were forced to remain silent. However, a new era was marked by a chain of uprisings commonly known as the ‘Stonewall Riots’. These were a series of violent confrontations between police and gay rights activists in New York City. In response to the second raid in a week by police on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village that had been selling liquor without a license, about 1,000 transvestites, gays, and lesbians fought back against police by shouting, throwing debris, and refusing to exit the premises. The police officers responded mercilessly with violence, and many of the rioters were brutally beaten and injured.
This movie reveals a sign of regress of our society because, most lynching incidents in America which occurred in public spaces and were usually the result of rape allegations involving black male supposedly assailants and white women who were purportedly their victims has not been seeing as a pure act of cruelty and hated from white supremacist calling for “justice”. A proof of this is that today, the noose appears in secluded areas such as school grounds and workplaces (Hyde Turner tragedy at work Conrald, Texas) as a result of racial tension in the U.S. Years after the Civil Right Movement, the battle for respect among all people regardless of the color of their skins and the end of racist organization or movement is far from over. A change has been operated but it is not enough to prevent such actions in the first democratic country of the world. In my opinion, the fact CNN host Kyra Phillips emphasize the importance that “youth people understand the horrors of the noose.” shows that American youth today are more sensitive about racial violence than previous generations of Americans. The essential reasons is because these major racial acts of violence occurred in the past so we should now be able to look at it from a clear, reasonably coherent and tolerant point of view in order to make these events stop.
The Los Angeles Riots of 1992 was an extremely controversial time in American history and also a great stepping stone for civil rights. Rodney King, a parolee under the influence of alcohol, although it had been assumed that he was under the influence of narcotics at the time of the arrest, had run red lights and stop signs and was chased down and detained in South Central Los Angeles on March 3rd, 1991 in the Lake View Terrace district. During his arrest, a local resident caught video of a violent beating on Rodney King by four members of the Los Angeles Police Department. This became a rallying cry for activists in and around Los Angeles and other places in the United States. The video that was captured shows four white police officers clubbing and kicking Rodney King repeatedly.
Out of this resentment was born the Pachuco a “Zoot Suit” wearing young Mexican American who rebelled against the norms of segregation by entering the clubs they weren’t supposed to be allowed in and ruling the dance floor. In the middle of a wartime economy when most citizens were rationing everything they used and putting in efforts to save up for the war, Pachucos were spending the money in their pockets on the glamorous suits that they paraded the streets of Los Angeles in. This was seen as a form of disrespect to the white citizens who were rationing for their country and racial tension quickly began to build. The young Pachucos didn’t find much acceptance in their own households either. Most of their parents were striving to conform and fit in, not rebel and stand out.
The Dynamics When it comes to gangs people may have the image of just people looking to cause trouble and violence but there is a sense of family and protection for the members, if you take a closer look. In Stacey Peralta’s documentary Bloods and Crips: Made in America released in 2008; Peralta is an American director and is also known for his career as a professional skateboarder and surfer. Peralta examines the conditions that have lead to years and years of devastating violence between young blacks in South Los Angeles. The film raises the question for me, how did these people get to this point?. Peralta argues that the life of the Bloods and Crips is a life a despair running through the family and is all in order to survive; he argues that gangs are a doomed to fail route in life.
If the incident in Tampa Bay does not show a person racism, this event might. In New York City, an average of seven Latin Americans were killed a year between 1986 to 1989, but in 1990, that number increased greatly. In that year,twenty-three Latin Americans were killed by police gunfire. When asked how he felt about racism being involved in police brutality,Yussuf Naimkly of the University of Regina commented: "Excessive police force against blacks has always been tolerated, because as a formally enslaved minority African Americans are trapped in a cultural context specifically designed to inhibit their development and thus minimize their threat to white hegemony" (C.C. 72) Executive Director of Police Misconduct Lawyers Referral Service Karol Heppe commented, “Brutality against minorities is a daily occurrence in Los Angeles,” she says.
It was an early morning on June 28, 1969, when police raided a gay bar at Stonewall Inn. Police raids were a commonplace at that time, but during this particular “occasion the gay and lesbian patrons fought back and sparked days of protest” (qtd. in “Should Gay Marriage” 4). These riots and protest lasted on and off for a totally of six days, and marked the beginnings of the gay rights movement (Carter