"This whole assault on “woke culture” (which isn’t a thing) is really about fighting to breathe a last breath into a dinosaur that refuses to become extinct." - Alicia Garza
FOMO on FACING HISTORY
[Student supporters of genEQUALITY recently painted murals in each of NYC’s five boroughs to illustrate #InclusiveSafety. This Brooklyn-based mural stands in East Flatbush. Instagram: @genEQUALITY]
Happy Pride, Everyone!
We have every reason to party, having emerged from a global pandemic and four years of an Administration that held the LGBTQ community in contempt. The simple act of Secretary of State Antony Blinken permitting embassies across the world to fly the Rainbow flag is a course-correction. But one wonders if Biden will take the opportunity to discuss Putin’s crackdown of gay rights across Russia (not to mention nearby Chechnya) when they meet this coming June 16th.
This week’s FOMO returns to the origins of the Stonewall Rebellion; tracks the ongoing investigation of the January 6th insurrection; looks at how one scholar is attempting to reinvent the study of classics; and amplifies two African-American elders of the LGBTQ movement.
What Was Stonewall?
Last year while the Red Carpet version of New York City’s Gay Pride was cancelled due to coronavirus, the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives Matter and Against Police Brutality (yep, a mouthful) convened downtown, following every safety protocol. Absent the bank floats, it felt truer to Pride’s roots. I was there and departed just as cops were massing at Washington Square Park — on foot, on horse, on bikes, and in vans. Moments later, my friends texted that they were being pepper-sprayed.
It did not come as a shock to me, then, when I read that the organizers of NYC Pride had decided to ban the NYPD from marching in Pride through 2025. I was a bit surprised by those who quickly flew to their full-throated defense. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capeheart (himself gay) scolded the organizers, demanding that inclusion be absolute. While the New York Times Editorial Board carried a similar tune, the writer Roxane Gay, a frequent contributor to the paper of record was NOT having it. She took on both Capeheart and her sometime employer: “The idea that we should now forgive the past and make peace with oppressive police forces is ludicrous.” She then added, “Law enforcement is not an innate identity. The police are not marginalized. They aren’t disowned by their families for carrying a gun and badge. They haven’t been brutalized or arrested because of how they make a living.”*
It occurred to me that far too many are unfamiliar with not just the events which led to the Stonewall Rebellion (also: Uprising, or Riot), but the adversarial relationship between the cops and the gay community during the late sixties. In the June 27, 2019 episode of You’re Wrong About, its two hosts recount the events of that night - really, nearly a week of mayhem. Despite gay bars being illegal in NYC at the time, the workaround was that the Mafia owned the bars - in the case of the Stonewall, the Genovese family — and had an “understanding” with NYPD. Apparently, the cops at the Sixth Precinct on Charles Street shook them down for the equivalent of $9,000 a month. That was the price of doing business. Extortion, assault, and arrest.
There are many contradictory accounts of that evening, even disagreement over who was there. Consensus holds that Marsha P. Johnson was one of three who responded to the police that evening. Onlookers recall that she threw a shot glass at a mirror in the torched bar screaming, ‘I got my civil rights.’”
It’s understandable that some folks never learned about Stonewall. To even teach LGBTQ history in the public schools provoked a firestorm - even in NYC when I was in high school there was a brouhaha about a proposed “Rainbow Coalition,” which was (ahem) cancelled before it had the chance to be piloted.
*Last night, three weeks to the day before Pride, riot gear-wearing NYPD clashed with folks out for the evening in Washington Square Park. Way to win over NYC.
The January 6th Insurrection WAS Televised
I’m particularly disturbed by the makeunder of the January 6th Insurrection with the Republican Party doing its best “don’t believe your eyes and ears.” While I’ve written about podcasts like Virginia Heffernan’s “After Trump” and "Cleanup on Aisle 45,” I was happy to stumble across “The Capitol Insurrection Report” which launched in May. This weekly podcast is closely tracking the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation, while grounding it in history. One of the ironies that host Scott Koon notes is how laws that Congress made in the sixties in response to the civic rights movement and anti-war protests can now be deployed against the Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol in the hopes of upending the certification of the presidential election.
The Trouble With a Classicist He Looks at a Tree
A few months ago, I was taken aback when Cornel West co-authored an op-ed calling for Howard University to reverse its decision to dissolve its classics department. While it seemed off-brand, I chalked it up to his unabiding faith in the word. Soon after I managed to catch a riveting Daily podcast profiling Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Dominican-born classics scholar at Princeton who was singlehandedly attempting to reinterpret his discipline through a racial justice lens. I’ve been meaning to include the pod for a while, I found him so compelling. Now that I have re-read West’s essay, I see that the two aren’t so far apart. Said Dr. West, “We must be vigilant and draw the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other.” What reminded me to circle back to it was the recent kerfuffle at the Committee of the Fine Arts. In the waning days of his Administration, Trump had appointed the entirely new board, stocking it with cheerleaders for his (now abandoned) draft order to “Promote Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” (Basically, MAGA for architecture.) When Biden asked for their letters of resignation, its chair Justin Shubow, himself discipline of “classical architecture,” (though neither a designer nor an architect) refused to step down. While Biden’s picks include appointees who have worked on the Blacksonian; teach urban planning at an HBCU; and are the former head of NYC’s Public Design Commission, I can only hope that Padilla Peralta will be invited to join them.
The Shoulders We Stand On
LGBTQ folks are more often than not erased from history. Have you ever heard of Frank Kameny? Many folks consider him the father of the modern gay civil rights movement with his founding of the DC branch of Mattachine Society back in 1961.
Chip Delany
Samuel “Chip” Delany is both one of our greatest science-fiction authors, and literary critics. His bestselling series is the million-selling Dhalgren - which should have gotten the treatment Frank Herbert’s Dune got (and is going to get this fall). I first came to him via his incredible memoir, “The Motion of Light in Water,” on growing up as a Black, gay nerd in the Bronx; I later had the pleasure of meeting him at Outwrite. This year Chip turned 79, and he’s still going strong. Earlier this week he participated in the 39th Radical Poetry Reading, hosted by the Brooklyn Rail. In December of 2017 the host of Working interviewed Chip in his apartment in Philadelphia. It’s a rich conversation — recalling his experiences being out in early 1960’s New York; his lifelong exploration of the erotic; how his dyslexia shaped his writing process; and what consumes him now.
Barbara Smith
I first met Barbara Smith in Cambridge, where she taught me that discomfort was part of coalition building. Smith is perhaps best known as a co-author of the Combahee River Collective Statement in 1977, which announced a Black Feminism as distinct from white feminism in terms of practice and goals; coined the phrase “identity politics,” founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press; and edited Homegirls, a first anthology of Black lesbian and feminist writing. Last year seemed like a renassiance for her, as she was the perfect voice for the moment that gave us Black Lives Matter. “How To Dismantle White Supremacy” appeared in The Nation and included the Hamer-Baker Plan, a “Marshall Plan” to end white supremacy and systemic racism. That summer Chris Hayes sat down with her on his “Why Is This Happening?” podcast. There, she provided a backstory to her activism — how she was first in the civil rights movement — and a clear call to action which includes an end to mass incarceration.
While Chip Delany taught at a bevy of schools over his professional life - including UMass/Amherst and as a tenured professor at Temple University — and undoubtedly has a 401K — Barbara Smith was an independent activist her entire life and therefore has no pension. When she announced her retirement (something of a misnomer these days) colleagues created a crowdfunded pension fund - a “care circle.” For the price of a latte, you can thank Barbara Smith for DOING THE WORK for decades. I can’t think of a better expression of Gay Pride.
Because You’re Over ‘Netflix & Chill’
•Next week, TED Talk-er and comedian Negin Farsad will be doing a set at one of my fav performance spaces in NYC — Caveat! Elegantly named, “Negin Farsad Presents An Hour Of Comedy From Her Mouth Hole” tickets for her Tuesday show are $18. If you’re vaxxed, I hope to meet you there.
•Findings: Each year - including 2020 - The Civilians theater group organizes an “R&D” cohort to drive its eclectic approach to theater making. This year’s works-in-progress features a half-dozen shows — all online - from June 16-30. It’s free; just be sure to RSVP.
•For those who want to a Pride experience free of “police, politicians, and corporate floats,” check out the Queer Liberation March on June 27th.