SYLVIA RIVERA WAS HERE
Washington Square Park is heavy with history. Sitting down on a bench, you can hear the screech of skateboards as young students jump and spin around the fountain, which is turned off as the air gets colder and the wind gets more powerful. The wind carries the laughter of a girl, probably a student, strolling with friends. If you close your eyes and concentrate, you can hear the flap of pigeons as they fly in and out, as if dancing with those pedestrians that pass. Within you, there’s a pull. Something is missing, some knowledge you don’t have access to. Hidden beneath the pavement, forgotten like the leaves that vacated the trees. But the pull is strong, heavy. It questions, and implores you to know, to uncover and unveil what’s underneath. To rewind time, and see for yourself.
Who was here before that boy fell off his skateboard? Who did the pigeons dance for, before many of us ever existed? Whose laughter did the wind carry, before that girl ever stepped foot in this city?
Practices of celebration, commemoration, glorification, erasure, and violence can all manifest in an archive. The public space, like an archive, is where one can observe them happen in real time. It’s open to interpreting, to retelling, but also to outright forgetting. If we approach the public space as an archive, a repository of information, our eyes can catch on to many stories of the past, some easier to see than others. This visibility is determined by forces invisible to the eye, at least when it’s not searching.
“Y’all better quiet down,” Sylvia Rivera’s voice boomed through the microphone as she responded to the crowd’s choir of boos and jeers. Standing on a stage in front of the Washington Square Arch on June 24, 1973, Sylvia had been fighting for her promised slot to speak in front of the crowd on the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
“I have been beaten,” she had screamed, mustering all of the air in her lungs. “I have had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation. And y’all treat me this way? What the fuck is wrong with you all?”
On this day, Rivera decided to remove herself from the Gay Liberation Movement. Her disappointment in her comrades drove her to attempting suicide that same day, but her longtime mentor and friend Marsha P. Johnson prevented her from going through with it. Together, Rivera and Johnson were the founders of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). They were crucial actors in the Stonewall Riots, which are now recognised as a historical turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
Many, particularly members of the crowd who participated in booing Rivera on that June day in 1973, prefer to keep Rivera and Johnson’s generous contributions to the movement hidden. Nevertheless, the increase of historical studies of Stonewall – the unveiling of a transforming archive – proves that queer people of color and gay street kids were all at the forefront of this pivotal moment in queer history. As stated by Ehn Nothing in their “Queens Against Society” essay (2013), “the continued resistance to this narrative by assimilationist gays and the view of Stonewall as a disconnected, exceptional moment of gay revolt, has allowed only traces of the wider context of white supremacy, class oppression, transphobia, and hegemonic reformism to be brought to light.”
As a multi-racial group of revolutionary street queens, the resistance faced by STAR “illuminates the wider dynamics of the gay liberation movement, and allows us to understand the foundation upon which the current white supremacist, cissexist, middle-class gay assimilationist movement is built upon” (Nothing, 2013).
Such assimilationist groups within the queer community have fiercely resisted the recognition of these women with the goal of eroding the importance of their names. The violence of erasure chases after them, trying to disperse every footprint they’ve left behind; and yet, despite this, they can be found.
Washington Square Park hints at no traces of those who’ve stepped on it before. Bodies that lay beneath are commemorated with a single plaque that is nearly impossible to find in the 9.75 acres the park spans.
But when you know, it’s impossible not to feel it. When you know, it’s impossible for the chills not to creep up your spine with every step you take. When you know, it’s impossible not to look at the arch and think of Sylvia Rivera. It’s impossible to not hear her voice, echoing and reverberating through the bow of the stone.
Her desperation, her need to be heard and accepted gurgles out of me, like a water bottle exploding. I imagine what it would feel like to give action, give voice, to that itching, screaming, and yet silent urge. I see tourists passing by where that stage in 1973 once was, as they snap photo after photo of the arch’s impressive architecture. What would happen if I went up to them and asked: do you know what happened here? Do you know who she was? Why are you taking a picture of a place you know nothing about? I imagine myself getting exasperated and furious in front of harmless, dumbfounded tourists.
The truth is that talking has never been my forte, and I would never be able to convey the importance of Rivera’s work. Written words, however, are different. A salve to the itching need to let people know materialized for me in the form of a Sharpie.
The printer churned and mechanically spit out paper after paper: Sylvia Rivera at Washington Square Park, Sylvia Rivera at NYU’s Weinstein Hall, Sylvia Rivera at Christopher St., Sylvia Rivera at Bellevue Hospital, Sylvia Rivera at City Hall, Sylvia Rivera at the Chelsea Piers. Snapshots of her life layered on the printing dock – as she smiled, as she posed in drag, as she screamed, as she listened and paid attention, as she fought with every ounce of energy she had for the sake of every queer individual to live free of discrimination and persecution.
Sharpie on paper sounds like the screeching of tires on pavement. Draining the permanent marker of its ink, the key word is permanent.
“SYLVIA RIVERA WAS HERE,” each sleeve of paper reads, under each picture of Rivera..
Grab a bag, grab a camera. Grab the tape, grab the sharpie. Fasten sneakers, zip up puffer. Storm out, on a mission. My mind works on autopilot.
Washington Square Park on a cloudy December day feels vacant. In comparison to June of 1973, when in recordings it’s nearly impossible to see the pavement, today in 2024 people are scattered around. Some with coffee in hand cut through the park, some sit and stare at their phones, some look off into the distance, lost in their thoughts. The unmistakable tourist poses for a photo in front of the arch, as their partner takes several photos on an iPhone.
When I sneak into their shot, I know I am ruining the chance of that picture making it to social media. The pole directly behind them is the one I need, with the perfect angle from which one could have seen Rivera that day. I take the first photo from my bag, put tape around its four corners, and wrap it around the pole.
I can feel the tourists’ eyes on me, and I know it’s working. I smile to myself, and ignore that self-conscious automatic feeling that I might be doing something wrong. That I’m not following the rules. That I’m not complying.
Complying and following the rules did not help Rivera to achieve everything she did. Rivera triumphed because she worked outside of the system’s rules, ones that were not built for her in the first place. She triumphed because she fought tooth and nail until the very end. On the day of her death, while bedridden in St Vincent’s Hospital suffering from liver cancer, Rivera met with ESPA delegates to make sure Transgender people were included in the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act of 2002.
Her voice, carried with the cries of others, is still heard within organizations such as Sylvia Rivera’s Place. Their website reads: “What is now known as Sylvia Rivera’s Place started as a food pantry ministry in the basement of a tiny church on West 36th Street.” Rivera became the manager of this food pantry for the homeless at the church she attended in her last years of life. Footage of her spreading out the food, cooking, and devoting her time to helping others – fulfilling her life's work that began with her and Marsha helping other sex workers around 42nd Street – she carries out her tasks with a broad smile on her face.
In 2001, even as Rivera’s cancer continued to overpower her bodily capabilities, she still showed up at the food pantry day after day. During her final moments, she shared with the head of the Church, Reverend Pat Bumgardner, her dream of creating a “safe space and emergency shelter for homeless Queer youth in New York City,” as Rivera herself became at just 11 years old. Sylvia Rivera’s Place was her dying wish, and a manifestation of all of her hard work and dreams to create a world in which queer folks wouldn't have to constantly look over their shoulders, and would always have a place that they could call home.
Her echoing cry can be felt at NYU’s Weinstein Hall, where herds of students walk between classes. Kids who are lost in their self-centered worlds, worrying about their finals and grade placements pass by me in a hurry. Growing minds that probably don’t know what’s on my mind, that probably don’t see what I see. They can’t see what they don’t know. With three steps, I punch the tape, and brand the building with her presence.
The students lining up for their class eye me with curiosity, questioning. Read, I think. Learn. Know her name. I hear her voice, I see her words.
“If you want Gay Liberation then you’re going to have to fight for it,” Rivera declared during the 1971 NYU occupation. “We don’t mean tomorrow or the next day, we are talking about today. We can never possibly win by saying ‘wait for a better day’ or ‘we’re not ready yet.’ If you’re ready to tell people that you want to be free, then you’re ready to fight. And if you’re not ready, then shut up and crawl back into your closets. But let us ask you this: Can you really live in the closet? We can’t.”
A girl catches my eye, and smiles as she reads the words over the photo. What are the chances that she knows who she is? But the key is in her smile, her wide eyes eager to learn, ready to be inspired.
The students are crucial, to drive forth the message. To expand the archive, and to prevent the erasure.
“You people run if you want to, but we’re tired of running,” STAR finished its statement in 1971. “We intend to fight for our rights until we get them.”
And fight Rivera did. Until the very end.
Her contribution to the movement is acknowledged at the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center. Nevertheless, “The Mothers of STAR” panel receives backlash from many visitors daily, according to Alexxis Briviesca, the Outreach and Education Senior Manager at the Center.
Many still insist that Sylvia Rivera shouldn’t receive the credit she deserves. Yet more support anti-trans policies. The Trans Legislation Tracker has been tracking bills against the trans community across education, sports, healthcare, performance, bathroom policies, and more. They’ve recorded 2024 as “the fifth consecutive record-breaking year for the total number of anti-trans bills considered in the U.S.” In 2021, out of the 143 anti-trans bills proposed and considered, 18 were passed. As of 2024, 671 anti-trans bills were considered and 48 were passed.
Even with public acknowledgement and rightful accreditation of Rivera and Johnson’s work, the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center presents Stonewall and the fight for queer rights as a triumph of the past. Even though it's a space that acknowledges that these events should be celebrated, it presents a narrative that there is nothing else left to fight for. That the fight has been won – this is reflected in the last panel, titled “Stonewall’s Legacy,” where they showcase an image of the White House bearing the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet colors of the pride flag.
It is evident that the fight isn’t over. Sylvia’s fight isn’t over. Even after the first election of a transgender member in Congress, Delaware’s Sarah McBride, the fight isn’t over. Despite McBride’s election, Representative Nancy Mace still went forth and “introduced a resolution to ban transgender individuals in the nation’s Capitol from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity,” wrote Emily Wax-Thibodeaux for The Washington Post. The fight isn’t over because individuals are still complying in the fight for their rights, as McBride announced that she will “‘follow the rules… even if [she] disagree[s] with them.’”
City Hall has always had a gloomy air to me. If any place holds authority, City Hall makes no effort to hide it. Police cars that look like school buses make rounds from street to street, making you aware of your visibility. Buildings with ominous Roman architecture make you feel small. The City Hall Park is particularly dark on a December night, with its black marbled fountain and the dark fence that surrounds it. Looking up, my eyes catch onto a sign that reads “People with AIDS Plaza,” and the darkness finds purpose within me. It all clicks – of course, this is the place where individuals not only fought for their rights to love, but for their outright rights to live.
I take another picture from my bag, and the words “SYLVIA RIVERA WAS HERE” provide me comfort; with purpose.
The next day it rains. It feels purifying. I stroll through City Hall Park, and am struck by the fact that most of the taped pictures are still there. The water has slicked the paper to the pole, and the picture seems to hug it for dear life.
History can be retold in many different ways, but it cannot be erased. Someone will always be left to remember, to remind others of what happened at any given space in time. Sprinkled across the city, the words “SYLVIA RIVERA WAS HERE” are meant to remind and educate. From the piers, where Rivera once lived, to City Hall, where Rivera showed up ready to fight. These are coordinates loaded with history, one that isn’t given space in history books.
This is a reminder that SYLVIA RIVERA WAS HERE. Don’t forget.
