I would say to young people about putting your body on the street, having never done that myself in any way that endangered my life, assess the purpo… - Cheryl Clarke

When I read Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation by Dennis Altman in 1972, I came to understand the relationships among systems of oppression, issues of power over and enforced powerlessness–like my friend in her abusive marriage; or like African-Americans living in Mississippi particularly prior to World War II; or gay people trying to avoid detection in a government job during the McCarthy fifties. I got more involved in feminist thinking when I first came out as a lesbian in 1973, when I met up with black lesbians in a group called Salsa Soul Sisters, and through white lesbian friends of mine in New Brunswick, N.J.

(What lessons would you pass on to young LGBTQ activists?") Learn your limits. Also, what other strategies of dissent are in operation besides the "putting of one's body on the street"? Should you be engaged in registering voters in areas where there is historic discrimination and repression, radical blogging, educating others and educating yourself about radical life choices, feeding the hungry where no one else is, confronting lawmakers who are doing the opposite of what you put them in office to do, working at local levels?

As I said often about the Black Power/Black Arts Movements: we need our history, our culture, our literature. And this is what a whole multicultural generation of lesbians engaged in the 1980’s – creating cultural institutions so that we could live our lives with determination, decision, and yes, of course, pride.