Ever wonder why June is Pride Month?
It's to commemorate the Stonewall riots, an event that helped launch the LGBTQ movement, 50 years ago today. ️
It's to commemorate the Stonewall riots, an event that helped launch the LGBTQ movement, 50 years ago today. ️
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NewsTranscript
00:00We knew that something was happening that night that hadn't happened before, and that
00:21was momentous.
00:22This was a moment for gay people to stand up to the authorities, and that this had
00:28changed everything.
00:41I had been out to dinner that night, and again, like I normally did, I'd walk past the stone
00:46wall on my way home, and my partner and I, Craig Rodwell, we were walking back, and we
00:52could see a crowd formed in front of the stone wall.
00:55Naturally, we stopped and asked people what was going on, you know, knowing the bar, and
01:04we learned that there were people being held inside.
01:07Some people said that there had already been some violence committed by the police against
01:10some of the patrons, and just as we were learning all of that, the police had a paddy wagon
01:18arrive, which is a conveyance for prisoners, and they tried to bring their prisoners out,
01:27but the prisoners started calling for help from the crowd, and the crowd responded by
01:32yelling at the cops.
01:34They started throwing coins at the cops, and the coins started bouncing off the cops in
01:39the buildings, and even the patrons.
01:43They retreated back inside the bar.
01:46The crowd continued to grow, and now that things had been thrown, there was more violence
02:00expressed at that point.
02:05The police were trapped inside the building.
02:08They couldn't leave.
02:09They had to wait for reinforcements.
02:11When they came, that's when the riot really got underway.
02:16We stayed there until the riot quieted down, and that was at dawn, and we went back to
02:34the apartment and started working on a flyer to have a demonstration the following night
02:39in front of the stone wall.
02:42We distributed about 5,000 flyers during the day.
02:45It said, get the cops and the mafia out of gay bars.
02:49There was quite a crowd.
02:50Of course, when the nighttime came, the police responded, but this time they came with what
02:57was called then the Tactical Patrol Force, which was a specialized unit for dealing with
03:04riots.
03:07Their way of dealing with riots was basically to wait in and fight, so it created the second
03:14night of rioting.
03:30We had told the police in applying for a permit that we were going to have a march, and they
03:37said, well, you can only have a march if you have a permit.
03:39They said, no, we understand the permitting process, but you need to understand that we'll
03:43have a march whether you give us a permit or not.
03:47They didn't give us the permit until two hours before the march.
03:51They dropped it off at our apartment.
03:53Did things change for the LGBT community since Donald Trump was elected?
03:58Yeah, I think the climate for gay people has become worse.
04:03I think it's serious.
04:06We have evangelical preachers who are calling for the death of gays in the United States
04:14at this point.
04:16The religious right in the United States has gone way overboard in their reaction to progress
04:27in gay rights.
04:28The fight against gay rights has become more serious.
04:32We didn't have people fighting against us.
04:35Everybody was against us, but we didn't have people whose purpose in life was to make our
04:40lives worse, and that's what these people are doing today.
04:44You worried?
04:47I think we'll succeed, but I think there's still a fight to come.