Rumsey: And this weekend at Romare Bearden Park with this Stonewall Riots 50th anniversary commemoration what will be happening?Ĭomer: You know, we have intentionally designed this to be a commemoration and celebration, but also very intentionally focused on the history of Stonewall, of our movement and where we go.
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We need to continue fighting for transgender siblings within our movement and also for LGBTQ young people.
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And so we have to fight for a society that treats all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity with their inherent dignity and worth where they can be free from violence. Especially for transgender women of color it's a very difficult world that they live in. Just in the past few days we also heard of an instance very sadly where a transgender woman was found murdered in the woods near Lumberton, North Carolina. It's still working itself through the courts. You mentioned several that you see the LGBTQ community in Charlotte facing today?Ĭomer: I think you know certainly in Charlotte, North Carolina we're all familiar with the debate around HB 2 and the public accommodations ordinance debate that happened in Charlotte. Rumsey: Are there any other major challenges. The reason why we advocate for equality in the first place. So we can celebrate, we can commemorate, but we also see this as a reminder of our call to action.
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We're still fighting for access for low-income queer people to have access to housing and education. We've also had defeats in our past and we're still fighting for recognition of black and brown trans people. It's important to look at the progress we've made, but more importantly I'd say it's importan to look at the progress we still have to make.Īnd yes, we've had triumphs.
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And to go from that to where we now have marriage equality, where some school districts are protecting LGBTQ youth. From a place where homosexuality was illegal.you could be imprisoned for decades in North Carolina for being gay all the way up until the 1960s. It's important for us to take a look back on a landmark anniversary like a 50th anniversary to see where we once were to acknowledge where we've gone in a very short period of time. Rumsey: And why is it important to remember this event now in 2019?Ĭomer: You know, like any other movement for human rights or equality in the United States or anywhere else in the world it's important for us to remember where we came from. For whatever reason the people in that bar were just simply fed up with it. What we know it was just one of those semi regular raids by NYPD on one of the gay bars. Historians really don't know what was special about that particular night. And it happened on a semi regular occurrence.
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The Mafia was able to occasionally keep the police from enforcing the anti-gay law on serving homosexual people alcoholic beverages, but every once in a while just to keep up appearances, the New York Police Department would raid one of these gay bars. So at the time in New York City in the '60s it was actually illegal for bars to serve alcoholic beverages to people who were thought to be homosexual or were openly homosexual, and so what you had was this underground network of bars largely run by the mafia who took the risk of serving gay and transgender patrons in a very corrupt system. Rumsey: What actually happened in the Stonewall riots and what sparked it?Ĭomer: Yeah. Matt Comer, communications director for Charlotte Pride joined WFAE All Things Considered host Mark Rumsey. The local LGBTQ advocacy group Charlotte Pride is organizing Stonewall 50: Charlotte.