This is a month that's very important. I may have a lot of anger but it means a lot to me because after being at World Pride last year in Italy, to s… - Sylvia Rivera

it was a long night of riots. It was actually very exciting cuz I remember howling all through the streets, "The revolution is here!"

One of my best friends now, who has employed me for the last seven years before I changed jobs, is Randy Wicker. Randy Wicker was a very well-known gay male activist in 1963. He was the first gay male—before any real movement was there—to get on a talk show and state to the world that he was a normal homosexual. I give him credit for that. He has done a lot of different things, but he also in 1969 and for many years trashed the transgender community. It took him a lot of years to wake up and realize that we are no different than anybody else; that we bleed, that we cry, and that we suffer.

Part of history forgets, that as the cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started with the pennies, the nickels, the quarters, and the dimes. "Here's your payoff, you pigs! You f---ing pigs! Get out of our faces. " This was started by the street queens of that era, which I was part of, Marsha P. Johnson, and many others that are not here.