we have to remember one thing: that it was not just the gay community and the street queens that really escalated this riot; it was also the help of … - Sylvia Rivera

the laws do not give us the right to go and get a job the way we feel comfortable. I do not want to go to work looking like a man when I know I am not a man. I have been this way since before I left home and I have been on my own since the age of ten.

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.

I don't pull no punches, I'm not afraid to call out no names. You screw with the transgender community and the organization StreetTransgender Action Revolutionaries[STAR] will be on your doorstep.