Sylvia Rivera

In this loose knit community of drag queens and street hustlers "who hung out on 42nd Street", Sylvia was christened with her new name by "an old butch dyke and an old queen (the godfather and godmother of 42nd)" who chose the name for her.

Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York.

Rivera, who identified as a drag queen for most of her life and later as a transgender person, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.

With close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.

Rivera was born and raised in New York City and lived most of her life in or near the city; she was born to a Puerto Rican father and a Venezuelan mother.

She was abandoned by her birth father José Rivera early in life and became an orphan after her mother died by suicide when Rivera was three years old.

Rivera was then raised by her Venezuelan grandmother, who disapproved of Rivera's effeminate behavior, particularly after Rivera began to wear makeup in fourth grade.

Rivera's older friend Marsha P. Johnson had been Rivera's protector and friend since Rivera arrived in the city, and the two were close friends from 1961 through 1973.

As a result, in 1962 Rivera left home at ten years old and began living on the streets of New York.

Like many other homeless youth in the community, she engaged in survival sex as a child prostitute.

She was taken in by the local drag queens, including Marsha P. Johnson, who became Rivera's best friend and protector.

Rivera's activism began in 1970 after she participated in actions with the Gay Liberation Front's Drag Queen Caucus and later joined the Gay Activists Alliance at 18 years old, where she fought for not only the rights of gay people but also for the inclusion of drag queens like herself in the movement.

Rivera sometimes exaggerated her importance, purporting to have been active during the civil rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam war, second-wave feminist movements, as well as Puerto Rican and African American youth activism, particularly with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers but she could not prove her claims.

In 1970, Rivera and Johnson co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR).

STAR offered services and advocacy for homeless queer youth, and fought for the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York.

SONDA prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, credit, and the exercise of civil rights.

While Johnson freely admitted to not being the one to start the Stonewall riots, Johnson is one of the few people who multiple, independent witnesses all agree was instrumental in the week of rioting and "known to have been in the vanguard" of the pushback against police once the rioting peaked late the first night.

After Johnson was being praised for being involved in the Stonewall uprising, Rivera began claiming that she (Rivera) was also instrumental in the riots, even going so far as to have claimed to have started the riots herself.

Stonewall historian David Carter, however, questioned Rivera's claims of even being at the riots, based on contradictory statements that Rivera made, and on testimony relayed to him by early gay rights activists, such as Marsha P. Johnson, who denied in multiple interviews that Rivera had been there.

When the Stonewall riots occurred, Rivera was only 17 years old, and according to Bob Kohler, who was there on the first two nights of the riots, Rivera "always hung out uptown at Bryant Park" and never came downtown.

At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in New York City, which was the four-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Rivera gave her famous "Gay Power!"

speech.

Rivera and fellow queen Lee Brewster jumped onstage during feminist activist Jean O'Leary's speech, which was critical in tone towards drag queens, and shouted in reply, "Y'all Better Quiet Down! You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!"(O'Leary later regretted her words and stance.) During this speech from the main stage, Rivera, representing STAR, called out the heterosexual males who were preying on vulnerable members of the community.

Rivera espoused what could be seen as a third gender perspective, saying that LGBT prisoners seeking help "do not write women. They do not write men. They write to STAR."

After the speech, Rivera was backstage talking to people about having been at the Stonewall uprising.

Doric Wilson recalls that Marsha P. Johnson said to Rivera, “You know you weren't there.”

After Marsha Johnson confronted Rivera about lying about Stonewall at the 1973 rally, Rivera left Manhattan in the mid-1970s, relocating to Tarrytown, New York.

In these years Rivera lived with her lover and together they ran a catering business.

In 1987, Marsha P. Johnson told gay rights historian Eric Marcus that in the hours prior to Johnson arriving downtown to join the riots, Johnson had attended a party uptown and that "Sylvia Rivera and them were over in [Bryant] park having a cocktail."

"There are several other statements Johnson made to highly credible witnesses — namely, Randy Wicker, Bob Kohler, and Doric Wilson, all with deep and enduring ties to the LGBTQ rights movement — about Rivera not having been at the Uprising."

Kohler told Carter that although Rivera had not been at the uprising, he hoped that Carter would still portray her as having been there.

Another Stonewall veteran, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, claimed that he wanted to add her "so that young Puerto Rican transgender people on the street would have a role model."

When Kohler and Rivera had a discussion over whether Kohler would back Rivera's claims to Carter for the book, Rivera asked Kohler to say that Rivera threw a Molotov cocktail.

Kohler responded, "Sylvia, you didn't throw a Molotov cocktail!"

Rivera continued to bargain with him, asking if he'd say she threw the first brick.

He replied, "Sylvia, you didn't throw a brick."

The first bottle?

He still refused.

Finally Kohler agreed to lie and say Rivera had been there and had at some point thrown a bottle.

Randy Wicker, who was part of the Mattachine Society and a witness to the riots, said that Marsha Johnson had told him that Sylvia had not been at Stonewall "as she was asleep after taking heroin uptown".