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Stonewall parade makes its comeback in
Asheville
By Katie Mingle
June 24 (AGR)-- On Sun., June 29, to the great dismay of fundamentalists
everywhere, Asheville citizens will celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall
riots. People will be gathering in Pritchard Park at 6pm, decked out in
their flaming-ist gear and ready to parade through the streets of downtown.
The Stonewall riots, also remembered as the “Stonewall Rebellion”
and simply, “Stonewall,” are considered to be a milestone in
gay activism and are honored in gay pride parades and celebrations all
across America each summer.
The event took place June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, a well-known
gay bar on the west side of lower Manhattan. It started with a fairly
routine police raid on the bar and ended after five days of rioting by
thousands of people in the streets of New York. That the raid was “routine”
implies only that these raids happened frequently, but it is not to imply
that these raids at Stonewall and at other gay bars all throughout the
US didn’t have dire consequences for the people arrested, for the
drag queens and butches especially, who were often raped, beaten, and
humiliated by the police.
June 28 was a night like any other at the mafia-run Stonewall Inn when
eight police officers raided the bar and forced the patrons to stop dancing
with each other (there were laws against same-sex dancing) and into the
streets for ID checks. When they began to arrest some of the drag queens
(there were also laws against cross-dressing), the crowd became heated
and people started yelling and fighting.
Some say the drag queens led the Stonewall Rebellion, others say it was
the bull dykes. Most likely there was no one punch or single bottle thrown
that spurred the melee that commenced that night. What is certain is that
all hell broke loose on the street outside the Stonewall Inn and that
the people fought back with a fervor that they hadn’t unleashed before.
Eventually, the people forced the police inside the bar where they stayed
locked up until back-up arrived on the scene and the riot was temporarily
dispersed. Thirteen people were arrested and a handful of police were
injured. The entire riot lasted only about 45 minutes, but it was what
followed in the days after June 28 that turned Stonewall into a colossal
event.
Over the next four days, about two thousand people came out into the streets
of the West Village in what was less a protest than an explosion of rage
against the oppressive conditions they had been living under for so long.
Two thousand may sound small in light of what gay activism and gay pride
have become, but in 1969 it was the largest ever public demonstration
by lesbian, gay, and transgender people.
Immediately following the days of rioting people began organizing and
formed new activist groups such as the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and
the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). However, Stonewall was not the beginning
of gay activism, but a unifying moment.
Renee Vera Cafiero, a gay rights activist during the time of Stonewall,
put it this way: “Stonewall was a spark. It was Rosa Parks. Rosa
Parks was not the beginning of the black civil rights movement but somehow
she was unifying. She was something that you could rally around. And Stonewall,
for some reason, was the rallying point.”
The history of the Gay Rights Movement is thick and complex. Like most
political and cultural revolutions, it endured multiple schisms between
men, women, conservatives, liberals, and radicals. Nevertheless, important
strides have been made by the gay community in many realms. Great losses
were suffered as well, among them the assassination of Harvey Milk, the
openly gay superintendent of San Francisco; the death of 32 people in
an intentionally set fire in a gay bar in New Orleans; and the millions
of people who die of AIDS while the government denies them the proper
funding and care.
“Queer folks have always been a spectacle to mainstream society.
I think Stonewall was the beginning of embracing that,” said one
of the organizers of the parade. “On Sunday I want us to be a big
bunch of freaky queers having our fun in the streets, and let the people
look – they’re oh so curious anyway. I also hope we’ll
take some time to remember all of the people who have struggled and died
– some fighting for our rights, and others just for being themselves.”
The parade on Sunday will be followed by a “Queer Ball” with
d.j. Ta$te Maker starting at 9pm at the ACRC 63 N. Lexington Ave.
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Asheville peace activists go to court
By Shane Perlowin
June 23 (AGR)— Over two dozen people gathered outside the Buncombe
County District Courthouse on June 23 to show their support for local
citizens who were arrested during anti-war protests that occurred in late
March 2003 at the start of the US invasion of Iraq.
While the arestees were having their day in court, outside the courthouse,
people held signs that read “Arbitrary Arrest is Not Justice,”
“Standing for Peace is Not a Crime,” and “No Jail.”
Inside the courtroom, defendant after defendant pled “guilty”
to blocking the sidewalk (a class 3 misdemeanor) and each were made to
pay $150 in fines with few exceptions. Approximately $2,250 was paid to
the city. While charges had initially included “resisting arrest,”
they were reduced as part of a plea-bargain deal that was the district
attorney’s first offer to all of the defendants.
Attorney Bruce Elmore, who provided pro-bono representation for 24 of
the defendants, said, “I think it’s a vindication for the people
that participated in these protests that not a single defendant was convicted
of or pled guilty to resisting arrest. And that they only pled to very
minor technical violations which generally would result in a citation
rather than an arrest and would rarely, without resistance, result in
any physical force being used.”
Defense attorney James Mills, Elmore’s partner, upon asking the judge
for a lenient sentence for one of their clients added, to the surprise
of many in the courtroom, “My client has learned that there are better
ways to express his views.”
John Lapp, 17, was charged, along with three other high school students,
with disorderly conduct, trespassing, and resisting arrest, for chaining
themselves to the doors inside the federal building on Patton Avenue on
the morning of Mar. 20. Mills, their attorney, encouraged them to pursue
“deferred prosecution.” This entails that the defendants plead
“guilty,” but ask the District Attorney to let them pay $400
in fines and do an unspecified number of community service hours in order
to get the charges dropped from their records. Lapp said afterwards that
his attorney “didn’t seem to know what the hell to do in the
courtroom.” Their cases were continued to Aug. 6.
Also arrested on Mar. 20 were Mountain Xpress reporter Steve Rasmussen
and Asheville Global Report editor Seán Marquis. Journalists from
the Asheville Citizen-Times and WLOS News Channel 13 were not arrested
while covering the protests. Marquis’ and Rasmussen’s claims
that they were falsely arrested because they were simply reporting on
the protest event were dismissed by Asheville Police Department (APD)
Lt. Jon Kirkpatrick in an informal discussion during court recess. Kirkpatrick
stated that what Marquis and Rasmussen do is not legitimate media, rather,
it is “advocacy journalism;” they “let their subjective
feelings get in the way of their professional tasks.”
Marquis noted later, “Isn’t that interesting? They can arrest
you for the type of journalism you do.”
Ten women from Women in Black (WIB), an international movement of mourning
violence through silent vigils, are standing strong in the face of their
charges. The women were charged with second-degree trespass at the Vance
Monument on Mar. 28 after the park was barricaded off by the APD to prevent
protests from occurring there for reasons of “public safety.”
The WIB 10 did not plead guilty to their charges and are scheduled to
reappear in court on Aug. 6.
A number of those who pled “guilty” expressed regrets after
the proceedings over the fact that a more cohesive strategy of challenging
their charges was not developed and employed.
James Foshee, who accepted the plea bargain, said that the proceedings
went as he had expected they would, but that it was not the result that
he would have liked to see. He said of the defendants’ meetings leading
up to the trial, “There did not seem to be a conglomerate of people
who were willing to push for anything. I felt like it just fell apart.
I was pushing for everyone to plead ‘not guilty,’ but nothing
ever congealed. That made it hard for me because I would have been out
on a limb if I pled ‘not guilty’ and everyone else pled ‘guilty.’”
Foshee plans to file a complaint against the APD for the brutal way in
which he was arrested, which is evident in videotapes of his arrest.
Allie Morris, who is pleading “not guilty” to charges arising
from her arrests at the WIB vigil on Mar. 28 and at a critical mass bicycle
ride on Mar. 21, lamented the lack of solidarity among the defendants
and the loss of an opportunity to challenge the civil rights violations
that occurred: “When you plead guilty, you more or less legitimize
police malfeasance and vindicate the police from any claims of brutality.”
Bud Howell flew into Asheville from California for one day so that he
could defend himself against his charges. He was the last defendant to
go before the judge and was determined to plead “not guilty.”
Despite the fact that his representation, Elmore and James, tried to discourage
him from fighting the charges, Howell asserted, “There would have
been no point in being at that protest if I was going to plead guilty
today.” But, before he could even enter a plea, the court dismissed
his charges.
He had intended to illuminate with his testimony and a videotape of his
arrest the “highly unnecessary and excessive force” that three
officers used to apprehend him while he was standing on the sidewalk during
the Mar. 20 march. He said, “There are very legitimate questions
about accountability for the APD, excessive force, brutality, possible
entrapment, and their extremely careless and unprofessional handling of
a peaceful protest. Next time this happens the city might want to call
in the fire department or Parks and Recreation to deal with a march like
this because the police used extremely poor judgment in their methods
of choosing to arrest anti-war demonstrators that day. I think they are
aware of that poor judgment, and I believe that that is what led to the
dismissal of my case.”
Howell added, “It is bittersweet to have this case dismissed.”
Mary Giovanniello of the Asheville Legal Defense Collective (ALDC), a
group that formed prior to the Iraq war “out of a need in the community
to find lawyers and have a support network for people that were going
to be protesting the war,” at the end of the day said, “What
I saw in the courtroom was a little discouraging, that people ended up
paying the city so much money in fines. ALDC will soon be hosting workshops
on court solidarity practices, working with the National Lawyers’
Guild and WIB, who are doing court solidarity, to try to educate the public
and lawyers who now seem interested in learning something about it. An
encouraging thing that came out of today is that people are talking about
it. People are wondering what would have happened if they had all pled
‘not guilty’ and refused to accept these bogus charges. Eventually,
the prosecution may have had to dismiss everything, so we have to do some
education on the fact that court solidarity practices do work.”
Clare Hanrahan, a local activist who came out to show her solidarity with
those arrested, described the fines that were extorted from the protesters
as a “tax on dissent” to dissuade people from speaking out.
She said, “Now is a time for persistence, for pulling together and
collectively bearing the cost of this so that it doesn’t fall on
any one person. We’re going to differ about our approaches and techniques,
but what we’ve got to understand is that if we don’t continue
to make our dissent a visible force in the community, we’ve given
up.”
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