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| Source: Forbes |
Stonewall Riots and The Origin of Pride Walk
The Stonewall Riots or The Stonewall Uprising was the LGBT community’s retaliation in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New york. In the 1960s, police raids at gay and lesbian bars were very frequent because these bars were normally owned by the mafia.
The police raided the Stonewall Inn on 28th June 1969 and it was like any other raid. But this time, the police lost control of the situation. When the police became violent, the people present in the bar joined by people from neighboring gay bars all began fighting against the police. This was followed by a series of protests in the following days.
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| Source: The Village Alliance |
Activist groups were formed to fight against the injustice done to the LGBT community, demanding their right to live freely without fear of being arrested. One year after the whole situation on 28th June 1970, the first-ever gay pride march called Christopher Street Liberation Day, after the street Stonewall was located at, was held to commemorate the uprising.
Organizations were founded for gay rights in the following years in the U.S. Since then, June has become the month of LGBT Pride in honor of the Stonewall riots.
The Friendship Walk of 1999
The first pride walk of India was held in Kolkata on 2nd June 1999 and was called the Friendship Walk. It is also the oldest Pride Parade of South Asia. Today people are more aware of the subject but it wasn’t like that back then. This walk is a reminder to us of how people stood for their rights in the face of discrimination and how hard they had to fight.
Kolkata was chosen for the march because of its history of different movements for political and human rights such as Dalit rights, feminism, children’s rights, etc. It wasn’t some extravagant march, there were no huge posters or rainbow flags or Bollywood songs playing on loudspeakers. No, it wasn’t like that at all.
The march consisted of merely 15 queer individuals with half of them coming from different cities of India for this march. They all wore specially designed yellow t-shirts with footsteps printed on them with the caption “Walk on the Rainbow”. Owais Khan, one of the participants, was the one who initiated the idea of a pride walk.
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| Source: WordPress |
They named it “Friendship Walk” because it sounded more welcoming and harmless than “LGBT Pride” as it sounded too overt at that time. Owais Khan thought that while the U.S was celebrating Gay Liberation Day openly, they should do something too but just a bit more low-key, maybe a small ‘padayatra. The idea of this march stemmed from Gandhi’s Dandi March.
The participants split into two groups, one headed towards north Kolkata while the other towards south Kolkata. They met different people, various NGOs, State Human Rights Commission, and the AIDS control society, and talked to them about LGBT issues.
Later that day, a press conference was to be held at George Bhavan. All the major Television channels and newspapers had gathered at the place. When the march arrived at George Bhavan, they talked to the media about their agendas, the reason for the walk, and issues regarding their community.
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| Source: InUth |
In the end, they were asked to do a mock walk for pictures and articles to be published in the newspapers. Those who were comfortable being photographed did this victory walk of sorts and the whole event was covered by the newspapers and published the next day. The next pride walk of Kolkata, now called Rainbow Pride Walk, wasn’t organized until 2003 and was attended by around 50 people.
Following Kolkata’s example, other cities of India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai also held their pride walks but not until 2008.
Stonewall Forever
Across the street from the Stonewall Inn in New York City is the Stonewall National Monument. Barack Obama gave it the title of the national monument in 2016 and is the first to be dedicated to the LGBT community in the U.S. To bring the people outside of New York, who can’t visit the monument, closer, the LGBT Community Centre or simply The Centre partnered with Google to develop a digital version.
A digital version of the monument was created and named Stonewall Forever in 2019. It has a website and an app. It is a collection of stories of different queer individuals, videos, documentaries, and oral histories. The people whose stories had been excluded from records of Stonewall have especially been included here.
Source: Out
It’s a platform where users can even include their own stories and insights even if they don’t identify with Stonewall such as stories of people from the trans community or of people of color. All voices are welcomed here. Since it's a digital monument and will not perish with time but grow forever collecting stories from around the world, it's called ‘Stonewall Forever’.
Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary
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