Birth of the LGBTQ Power Movement

“Christopher Street Liberation Day March, New York, 1972,” Leonard Fink

How did a small group of people, coming from one of the most despised groups in the world, produce one of the most dramatic changes in human consciousness in the last 2,000 years, as well as a movement that now engages millions of people, on every continent?

Most people have heard about the Stonewall Riots in June 1969, when a handful of street kids, drag queens, and garden-variety queers fought back successfully against the latest police raid on the Stonewall, a Mafia-owned gay bar in Greenwich Village. But few know that what radically changed LGBTQ politics in New York City were the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), two organizations that coalesced immediately after Stonewall, and, for the first time in America, openly used the word “gay” in their names.

GLF was the first to form, organizing a march through Greenwich Village two months after the Stonewall Uprising, and one year before the first Pride march. A radical group, influenced by the New Left, it insisted that “gay liberation” (a term that would now include lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, and queer or questioning people) had to come from the liberation of all human beings. Two months later, several members split to create GAA, an organization that used the same confrontational tactics to stage blitzkrieg protests designed to force media coverage on a single issue: LGTBQ freedom.

Two years later, GLF leaders started the Gay Men’s Health Project, the first clinic specifically for gay men on the East Coast, inspired by ‘second wave’ feminists who set up numerous clinics run by and for women exclusively, and based on the principle that LGBTQ people had to take care of themselves. It preceded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis by a decade, and is still operating today as the Callen Lorde Community Health Center.

In this lecture and discussion series, you’ll learn about this often-forgotten history from someone who lived it: GLF veteran Perry Brass.

Mondays & Wednesdays (6/7-16), 6:30-8PM (ET)
$175 (4 sessions, 90 min. each)

Perry Brass is an author, journalist, playwright, and essayist. He was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front, the first radical gay organization to be formed in the US, after the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City. He co-edited Come Out!, the group’s influential newspaper, and co-founded the Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast. He writes for The Huffington Post, is a member of the PEN American Center, and has been a finalist several times for Lambda Literary Awards and was a finalist in 2012 for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction.