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Resistance to police brutality is intertwined with the Civil Rights and LGBTQ+ movements. Together, we must end it.
Long before the Stonewall riots of 1969, queer people of all identities were persecuted, harassed, taunted, and sexually assaulted by law enforcement during the 1950s and '60s. Trans Black women and women of color like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy were involved in spearheading the Stonewall rebellion, a culmination of an era when raids on LGBTQ+ spaces were commonplace. But it was certainly not the first such event.
A decade before Stonewall, in 1959, Cooper Do-nuts, a downtown Los Angeles doughnut shop popular with LGBTQ+ people, was the location of what is widely considered to be the first queer uprising in modern history. After two Los Angeles police officers attempted to arrest five people, including two trans women of color, one arrestee fought back, which eventually drew others to do the same. The officers retreated as patrons threw doughnuts, coffee, and silverware at them."The street was bustling with disobedience. Gay people danced about the cars," John Rechy, an eyewitness, writes of the events in his novel City of Night.
In 1966, a group of trans women in San Francisco fought back against police inside Compton's Cafeteria, a 24-hour restaurant popular with queer folks in the Tenderloin neighborhood. As officers began to verbally and physically harass its LGBTQ+ patrons, one very fed-up trans woman threw a cup of coffee at a policeman's head, sparking a riot led largely by trans women and drag queens.
According to Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman's documentary film Screaming Queens (2005), the riot ended with several queer people being taken into custody-only after a police car was destroyed, a newsstand was set ablaze, and numerous tables and windows were smashed.
In 1967, the Black Cat...