For the past few years I've tweeted and pinned this photo on June 1st through the entirety of Pride month, cause it has been and should always be the energy we carry.

But this year, given the current moment, I feel I need to go a bit deeper than just this photo.

I have to begin ofc with Sylvia Lee Rivera. A trans Puerto Rican/Venezuelan sex worker, she dedicated her life to us. Alongside Marsha P Johnson (also pictured), another of our foremothers, they founded S.T.A.R. to provide housing and care to other trans sex workers.

She was loud, abrasive, and her very existence marked her a threat even to respectable white gays. But where they sat in ivory towers begging for straight validation, between her work with S.T.A.R. and the Black Panther Party, she put her literal life and body on the line for us.

I do my best to receive the lessons provided by her life and work, and carry her energy in my spirit not just this month but every month and every day.

I'd also like to bring this article back, as it aims to complicate the common narrative of "who threw the first brick", asking us to shift away from the individualist approach and instead understand Stonewall as a collectivist effort. https://www.them.us/story/who-threw-the-first-brick-at-stonewall

Those nights were spontaneous and uncoordinated. They were a burst of queer rage that had been building for ages. There was violence, property was damaged, and an entire movement was sparked. That is a particularly relevant lesson right now.

Pride being ushered in this year to the sound of the people rising up only honors the legacy on which it was built, so let's keep it going, with love and care for each other. Even when no one else got us, we got us.

HAPPY PRIDE!!