Black Lives Matter to Us: The Role the LGBTQ Community Plays

“The gay rights movement literally started on a protest against police brutality.”

Ash Stephens embodies two sides of the fight against police violence. She is Black. She is queer. And she wanted to remind the estimated 10,000 protestors gathered outside the Colorado State Capitol Building that this police anti-brutality movement is partially rooted in the LGBTQ community.

Stephens stood on the steps of the Denver building where protesters organized daily marches since May 25, when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck.

It took nearly nine minutes as Floyd pleaded for his life, fell unconscious, and ultimately died. He is far from the first Black person to die while in police custody. He joins members of not only the Black community, but the LGBTQ community, in falling victim to this type of abuse.

“Trans women of color were the ones throwing the bricks at the cops when they came to Stonewall,” Stephens said.

Fifty-one years ago this month, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn where members of the LGBTQ community came to dance. Here you would find some of the community’s most marginalized people, butch lesbians, femme men, homeless youth, and transgender people.

On that night, police targeted a group of drag queens. And on that night, they fought back.

Martin Boyce was just 21 years old when he said he saw police dragging them into the back of a paddy wagon. Then he said the unexpected happened. One of the people under arrest took off a shoe and threw it at the police. “She turned around and kicked him on the shoulder. It was a shock to everybody,” Boyce told the Public Broadcasting Service. “But, that’s the first inclination something had changed.”

Related article: Trans BLM Protesters March for Tony McDade 

Much like the Black Lives Matter protests today, everything had changed. Within days, both protests and riots were erupting outside the Stonewall Inn. Then, like now, the movement quickly spread throughout the country.

“I really think there’s so much intersection between the forms of oppression that occur, especially with LGBTQ folks and the Black community,” said M. M was standing at a volunteer booth on the Saturday following Floyd’s death.

Wearing a t-shirt that said “I’m the transgender person the media warned you about,” M talked about intersectionality. It’s a big word activists use a lot these days. It’s an important concept meant to take into account all forms of oppression.

A Black woman, for example, might be discriminated against because of both being Black and being a woman. Say the Black woman was also an immigrant, or a member of the LGBTQ community. Those would be additional layers of separation that would make her even more vulnerable to abuse.

This means it’s more critical than ever to bring members from all disadvantaged groups together to fight as one.

“We can’t end oppression for one without ending oppression for all,” M said.

The thousands and thousands of people who’ve spent the month marching through the streets of Denver do represent all minorities. Black people and their allies, working together. The numbers are staggering. More than 10,000 people descended on the city in one afternoon. Thousands more kept the pressure on as they marched day after day after day.

“We just want to get together as a community [to] raise our voices up as one. We have to demand a change,” said Larisa Grace, a multi-racial, bisexual woman who helped organize one of the rallies.

The Denver native came out because of her African American son whom she said has faced discrimination since he was a young child. A few months ago, Grace, who is white-passing, said a Denver police officer came to take a statement from her after someone vandalized her car. She said everything was going fine until her Black son was spotted by police.

“As my son got out of the car, a six-foot-tall Black boy just 14 years old, he was stopped and asked if he had a weapon. This is wrong! Anyone who says racial injustice doesn’t happen, they truly are not paying attention,” Grace said.

Dee Carroll, a Black lesbian who lives in Aurora, agreed. She also helped organize the demonstration and said the movement for her is about civil rights for members of all oppressed minority groups.

“We’re all looking to be able to live and to go outside and have the same types of lives as everybody else. We’re all just fighting for the same thing,” she said.

Today’s movement is not limited to Floyd. Protestors all around the country are chanting the names of other African Americans killed by police. The Black Lives Matter movement, which is at the forefront of many of the nation’s protests, incorporates all minorities. One of the three founding members is a Black, queer woman.

People in cities across the country are calling for action and for change. Some want a nationwide database to report police abuses, legislation that would allow private civil lawsuits against police officers, a reshuffling of money from police departments to community based programs, better training for officers, and limits on physical interventions police can use.

Here in Colorado, protests have sprung up across the Front Range, from people in the traditionally conservative city of Colorado Springs to those in liberal cities like Boulder. But the biggest protests by far have centered around the state’s capitol building in Denver.

This is where Stephens stood on the west side steps, holding up a rainbow flag. For her, these protests are a significant reminder of the role the LGBTQ community still plays in the police anti-brutality movement.

It is ironic this is happening in June, the month when Pride is traditionally held to coincide with the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. She said if anyone should be protesting alongside the BLM movement, it should be the LGBTQ community.

“Literally the reason why we have most of the rights we have now is because [people at Stonewall] fought the cops. [Police brutality] was the whole point of the movement, and we need to remember that. To go back to that. We should all be out here protesting this,” she said.