Stonewall Remembered: Honoring Our History

Pride began not with confetti but with bricks.

Before rainbow flags, before parades, before corporations wrapped themselves in slogans, there was a bar. A mafia-run dive called the Stonewall Inn. And there were the people who found sanctuary there. Trans women. Butch dykes. Drag queens. Homeless queer youth. Sacred sluts. Outlaws. People who had been pushed to the edges and were still standing.

On the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the bar again. Just like they always did. Only this time, the people inside said no.

That no echoed across history.

The Stonewall riots were not quiet or clean. They were not sanctioned or strategic. They were fierce, raw, necessary. They were led by those who still get erased from the story. Black and brown trans women like Marsha P. Johnson. Sex workers like Sylvia Rivera. Queer street kids whose names we may never know but who refused to back down.

To honor Stonewall is to remember that Pride did not start as a party. It began as resistance.

It was also joy. And reclamation. And the refusal to be told that our bodies, our desires, our ways of loving are wrong. It was about survival, yes. But also about belonging. About finally being seen.

Sex and revolution are not separate. They never have been. When you police sexuality, you police identity. When you criminalize pleasure, you criminalize people. And when you shame the erotic, you shame the soul.

I have lived at the intersection of queerness, sex work, feminism, and embodied healing for more than forty years. I have witnessed what happens when people are silenced. And I have seen the power that comes when we speak the truth of our lives.

Stonewall was not the beginning of queer resistance. But it was a flare in the night sky. A moment when centuries of fear cracked open. And something bold and luminous stepped forward.

That flame did not burn out. It carried through the AIDS crisis. Through bans and backlash. Through mourning and marriage and the long, slow fight for visibility. Through whispered coming-outs and shouted parades. Through loss. Through laughter.

And it is still burning now.

It burns in the hands of trans youth fighting for healthcare. In drag performers reading stories to children despite the threats. In queer elders who came out late and proud. In disabled queers claiming their bodies as beautiful. In every person who says, “This is who I am. I will not disappear.”

To honor Stonewall, we must also ask who is still being pushed aside today. Who is still unsafe. Who is still being legislated against, misrepresented, or ignored. Whose joy is being stolen. Whose grief goes unacknowledged.

And then we must act. Not just in memory. But in movement. In care. In fierce, everyday solidarity.

Pride is not only a celebration. It is an offering. A promise that the fire will not go out. That we will remember the ones who came before. That we will protect the ones still coming through.

We are still here because someone refused to be silent. Someone danced. Someone kissed. Someone fought. Someone stayed.

Let us stay, too.

With love,
Nina