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Trans Activists to Be Honored With Monument Near Stonewall
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were pioneers of the LGBTQ rights movement.
Trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are set to be honored with a monument in New York City — and it’s about time.
Both women are considered to have been pivotal to the riots that took place at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, essentially the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. (Though some claim Rivera was not present at the actual riots, she was a regular patron at the Stonewall Inn and undoubtedly still an essential figure in LGBTQ history.)
The monument dedicated to them is currently set to be placed down the street, at the Ruth Wittenberg Triangle.
Together, Johnson and Rivera founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a group devoted to helping homeless LGBTQ youth, drag queens, and trans women. They both performed as drag queens themselves, and continued advocating for LGBTQ equality until their deaths — Johnson in 1992 and Rivera in 2002.
Their monument is part of a recent $10 million initiative called She Built NYC, which aims to create a more diversified array of public artworks around the city.
“These representations have historically failed to reflect the multiplicity of people that have contributed to the city throughout history,” a 2018 press release said. Nominations were accepted from the public to decide which figures would be honored through the initiative, and both Johnson and Rivera were among the most highly requested honorees.
Previously, a monument known as the Gay Liberation Monument was erected across from the Stonewall Inn, and featured two standing men and two seated women, made out of bronze but covered in white lacquer.
But many LGBTQ citizens and activists felt the statues were an inappropriate representation of the riots, and of what the true pioneers of the movement looked like. Some even went so far as to paint two of the faces brown in protest back in 2015.
“How many people have died for these two little statues to be put in the park to recognize gay people?” Johnson herself asked after the monument was put in place in 1992.
It is yet to be announced when the new monument will be installed, or who the artist will be.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
