“We Will Outlive Them”: At Stonewall, Resistance Flares

“There are queer and trans kids, adults and elders in the future.”

Protestors at Christopher Street Park pose for a photo. Credit: S. Baum

This weekend at Stonewall, trans pasts and trans futures collided. The crowd of over 300 people at Christopher Street Park cheered on as the two kids took the stage, all smiles as they were wrapped in the pink, white and blue. They were led by Denise Norris, co-founder of The Transexual Menace, a direct action group which began organizing against trans exclusion in 1993.

In 1969, the Stonewall uprising spilled out from the iconic gay bar and into the streets — including that same park, a small patch of pavement and grass across the road. Many see this as the birthplace of the LGBTQ liberation movement as we know it today.

Now, a new generation has joined the fight.

“Even in our middle school, which supposedly accepts everyone, we face hate from many of our classmates,” one of the kids told the crowd.

They passed the mic to their friend. “They’re saying, ‘Oh, this school is progressive. And we don’t stand up for hate, and homophobia, and transphobia,’” the other youngster added. “Well, maybe they should do something about it.”

Donald Trump’s second term as president has wrought an unprecedented wave of anti-trans vitriol. The administration has effectively sought to ban trans and intersex people — or likely anyone suspected of being trans or intersex —from joining the military, using the correct bathrooms, playing on sports teams, accessing life-saving medical care, and acquiring state IDs that acknowledge their existence, to name just a few of the provisions’ effects. Trans youth, especially, have been targeted. Meanwhile, politicians and pundits have condemned transness as “toxic,” a “virus” and “a fad”.

But Saturday’s rally was living proof of trans histories, resilience and joy. One protestor held a sign reading: “We are older than your laws and we will outlive them. There are queer and trans kids, adults and elders in the future.”

People gathered at Christopher Street Park in New York City to protest the Trump Administration's repression of trans people on Feb. 22, 2025, in New York, York. CREDIT: S. Baum

The area in and around Stonewall, including the park, was incorporated into the National Parks Service in 2016 as a historical monument of the West Village enclave where trans, queer and gender nonconforming youth made their home for decades. But after Trump’s return to office, even the NPS webpage for Stonewall saw the word “transgender” removed.

“Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal,” the new website now reads, the “T” conspicuously missing. “The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights.”

Norris spoke about organizing the event within her own intergenerationally trans family, including her nephew, Garrett. Now in his twenties, Garrett is working with his aunt to cultivate a national network, encouraging trans people and their allies everywhere to take autonomous action.

“If you don't want to be transgressive, if you're not here to make the systemic change that we need in this society so trans people have space to be equal — not merely acceptable — you might as well be the ‘transgender happy friends,’” Norris told Erin in the Morning at the rally. “The battle is not about if we are going to be passable or acceptable to the oppressor. It doesn’t matter if you’re ‘passing,’ they’re still going to come for you.”

The Transexual Menace, whose blood-stained logo is a campy, tongue-in-cheek nod to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” cut its teeth mobilizing against trans exclusion from queer spaces and causes in the 1990s. Where some gay and lesbian organizations sought to align themselves with more white, heteronormative, upper class sensibilities, the Transexual Menaces — “Stone Butch Blues” author Leslie Feinberg among them — refused to center respectability politics in their actions, Norris said.

At the rally, speakers showcased a tour de force of trans life spanning generations. Dr. Carla Smith, CEO of The NYC LGBT Community Center, told the crowd how she brought along her wife and grandchild. Jay Walker, a founding member of groups like the Reclaim Pride Coalition and Gays Against Guns, led the protestors in chants. Bernie Wagenblast, the much-beloved voice of New York City subways, was also spotted among the masses.

Angelica Torres, an actress and activist on the board of directors for The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, spoke passionately about trans histories, referencing the mass slaughter of gender nonconforming people by world powers like colonial Spain and Nazi Germany.

“We’re criminalizing trans people for existing and decriminalizing those that commit actual crimes, like Donald Trump and his 1,500 insurrectionists,” Toress said in her speech.

She could be heard from outside the metal gates of Christopher Street Park, which are adorned with archival images of trans and gender nonconforming youth — smiling, hugging, protesting. It was these street queens and butches of color that are said to have “thrown the first brick at Stonewall,” a common phrase used to characterize the much-mythologized riots. Protestors left bricks beneath the photographs in their honor.