‘Every day is Stonewall’: Lesbian activist reflects on riots and fight for equality 50 years later

Robin Tyler vividly remembers the night in New York City that became a catalyst for a global gay rights movement – after years of being kicked down, everything seemed to “suddenly explode”.

A lesbian civil rights activist from Canada, Ms Tyler worked in New York as a Judy Garland impersonator at the 82 Club, a popular nightclub at the time that featured shows with female impersonators.

She never felt safe. In 1960s downtown Manhattan, police would frequently harass LGBT+ bars, kicking down doors, arresting people and seizing alcohol.

During her first month in the city, she was arrested for “impersonating a woman” after the police rounded her up alongside a group of men in drag. Her first call in jail was to the New York Post. The next morning, the paper ran the story: “Cops Grab 44 Men And a Real Girl in Slacks”.

But it all changed on 28 June 1969. It was just like any other night. Until it wasn’t.

The Stonewall riots of 1969 marked a historic, multi-day uprising among the LGBT+ community, when people at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, fought back against the New York Police Department during a routine raid, reflecting a major turning point in the nationwide fight for equality.

“What happened at Stonewall – I think it happened because there were people of colour, and trans people, and homeless youth… people who were being picked on their entire lives, not just for being gay, but for being homeless, or for not having any money,” Ms Tyler told The Independent.

“What’s great about Stonewall is that it takes the focus off of any one specific person and you begin to understand that it happened because it was a movement,” she added. “And when it wasn’t yet a movement, there were people who were just so brave, and they couldn’t take it any more… Then everything exploded.”

The Stonewall Inn, later designated a US landmark under former president Barack Obama, became the epicentre of a revolution led in part by transgender activists, homeless youth and people of colour – minorities within the minority, all demanding civil change by disrupting the status quo.

She was dating her former partner, Pat Harrison, at the time of the riots. Without platforms like Twitter, breaking news notifications or texting, she said news spread the old-school way: the two awoke to phone calls the morning after the first night of the riots, alerting them to protests erupting outside of the Stonewall Inn.

“Everybody immediately called five people, then those people called 10 people, and so on.”

“We decided to go that night not knowing if it would continue,” she said. “We just heard that people weren’t taking it any more, and most of us who went to bars, or had been attacked, or involved in raids... we knew it had been years, and years, and years of just being kicked down.”

She went to the riots on the second night with her partner. As a Canadian citizen staying in the US on a visa, Ms Tyler had to sign an affidavit upon entering the country that vowed she wasn’t homosexual. By joining the demonstration, she would have immediately risked deportation.

“My every instinct was to join the riots,” she said. “I always say I was born a lesbian because when the doctor hit me, I hit him right back. I came out of the womb fighting. So to stand there and not be able to fight back was difficult.”

She stayed on the sidelines as police appeared clearly taken aback by what they were witnessing. “Our side was much angrier than the police,” she said.

Thousands of protesters had descended onto Greenwich Village.

Police brandished their guns and beat people with batons. Eventually, activists pushed back, climbing telephone polls and throwing whatever they could find at police cars, from beer cans to bricks. At one point, a parking meter was reportedly used as a battering ram when the police barricaded themselves inside the tavern. Tensions escalated when demonstrators began hurling fuel-filled bottles.

“They weren’t expecting it and I think they were shocked, since they had spent so many years brutalising us, and arresting us, and terrorising us,” Ms Tyler said. “When you yell at a bully, a bully turns out to simply be a coward in disguise. So when all these people stepped up and spoke out, we saw a lot of very, very scared police… we had nothing but posters and rage.”

The city and its police department have since taken steps to acknowledge their involvement in the oppression of the LGBT+ community that led to the Stonewall riots.

Ahead of the 50-year anniversary, the NYPD issued an apology to the community for its actions during that night, which police commissioner James O’Neill described as “wrong, plain and simple”.

“I think it would be irresponsible of me as we go through World Pride month, not to speak of the events at the Stonewall Inn in June of 1969,” he said, going on to describe the targeted raids as “discriminatory and oppressive”.

Transgender activists Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two pioneering women credited with helping to lead the riots, will also be commemorated with a public monument scheduled to be built in Greenwich Village.

Those who attended the original Stonewall riots exactly 50 years ago acknowledge the sweeping progress the community has made since then, thanks to decades of activism which led to moments like the passage of marriage equality in 2015, and the US House of Representatives passing the Equality Act – which extends civil rights protections to the LGBT+ community – earlier this year. Yet, they say the fight is far from over.

For Ms Tyler, accepting the city’s apology is a process to be taken day by day. In her words, “Every day is Stonewall.”

For now, she’s focused on leaving younger members of the LGBT+ community with advice to consider as they celebrate at the annual Pride march on Sunday.

“The youth has to understand that unless you continue fighting … it can all be reversed in two seconds,” Ms Tyler said. “I’m asking you to look at today. Stonewall has to be today. Every day has to be Stonewall until we totally win our rights. Every day.”