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On June 24, 1978, what had been a fun event was dramatically altered by systematic, brutal bashings and arrests by Police.Īt 10pm that night, people began to assemble at Taylor Square.
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Many others attended in support of our fight against oppression and discrimination. It wasn’t just lesbians and gay men that participated in the first Mardi Gras. In 1978, many lesbians and gay men were reluctant to participate in a daytime demonstration – if your employer or school saw you, you could easily lose your job. Some people also wanted a night time celebration. This was very successful by our standards, with around 500 people participating.
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In Sydney, lesbian and gay organisations called a march that was held in the morning. They asked that lesbian and gay communities host Gay Solidarity events. The lesbian and gay community in San Francisco reached out to communities around the world, including in Sydney. It's the revolution.The first Mardi Gras held on Jwas planned as an addition to the morning demonstration to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969.Īt the time, the lesbian and gay community in San Francisco were fighting the Briggs Initiative, which was a push to remove anyone who supported lesbian and gay rights from the school system. After all, as one of the defiant transgenders who stood up to police in the Stonewall Inn that first night, the late Sylvia Rivera, said, "I'm not missing a minute of this. So get out this June and take in some of the events and festivities leading up to Chicago's annual Pride Parade. You can literally mark Pride every day of of the month at one event or another. All month long, there are Pride-related concerts, readings, films, plays and much, much more all around the Chicago area. Of course, the celebrations and commemorations aren't just limited to festivals and the parade on the last weekend in June. But there is still much more work to do in order to see equality in our nation. There is a lot more to celebrate now, thanks to the pioneering activism of those first marchers and others who've toiled to overturn every vestige of discrimination. But, at its core, Pride is still a political, cultural and social statement that LGBTQ people are equal in every way and expect to be treated that way. And those who march, watch and celebrate have swelled from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. Those first Pride parades in Chicago weren't parades as much as defiant political statements. Over the years, the celebration has changed. Thus, a tradition was born, one that's been celebrated in Chicago on the last weekend of June ever since. A year after the riots LGBTQ activists in Chicago and Los Angeles went on the march to mark the anniversary of the New York uprising and to assert that LGBTQs everywhere would no longer accept second-class treatment. The Stonewall Riots changed New York but they had an impact far beyond the banks of the Hudson. The next day thousands flocked to the street outside the bar to signal that, once and for all, LGBTQ people would keep fighting, proud and loud, for freedom from harassment and discrimination. Instead, as a crowd began to gather outside the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village, the drag queens and others who were supposed to meekly submit to the usual police harassment fought back. The police wagons pulled up and the cops started loading the bar patrons into them.īut this night, June 28, 1969, the patrons didn't follow the script. They separated the drag queens so female officers could feel them up to determine if they were men dressed as women.
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A handful of cops stormed into a small, packed bar full of LGBTQ people and began lining them up.