Art, Power & the Battle Over Memory
Every society crafts its origin myths. The stories we repeat shape who we honor, and who we forget. The classic Stonewall narrative claims it as a heroic uprising by gay men, a turning point that led to LGBTQ+ rights. It is tidy, digestible, and comfortable. But that comfort comes at a price: the erasure of those who did not fit the “respectable” image.
One of the earliest to resist abuse that night was Sylvia Rivera, a trans woman of color, just 17 years old, who fought with fury against the police. And yet her contribution was soon muted, footnoted, or scrubbed from official history.
Sylvia stood at the crossroads of revolution and erasure. Her story, and the artistic responses it has provoked, remind us that memory is contested terrain, and that art has the power to expose what politics prefers to bury.
Sylvia Rivera: Spark and Exile
Born in New York in 1951 to Puerto Rican and Venezuelan parents, Sylvia faced rejection almost from the beginning. Her mother’s death when she was young left her vulnerable, and she was raised by a grandmother who punished her for gender nonconformity. By age 11 she was living on the streets of New York, surviving through sex work, drag performance, and the underground networks of queer youth.
By the late 1960s, Sylvia had become part of a chosen family of drag queens, hustlers, and street kids in Greenwich Village. This community was despised not only by mainstream society but often by “respectable” gays and lesbians as well. They were seen as the “wrong image”—too flamboyant, too poor, too brown.
On the night of June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn, Sylvia Rivera was there. Accounts differ on the exact sequence, but multiple witnesses affirm that she resisted, threw objects, and stood defiantly as the police attempted to control the crowd. For many, that night was a breaking point: decades of harassment exploded into resistance.
Together with Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia went on to co-found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) in 1970. STAR was radical: it provided shelter, food, and political voice for homeless trans and queer youth. It declared that liberation must include the most marginalized—not only those who could afford to present themselves as assimilated.
And yet, only a few years later, Sylvia would be pushed to the margins.
The Calculated Erasure
Why was Sylvia erased? The answer is both simple and devastating.
As gay rights organizations gained momentum in the early 1970s, leaders decided that aligning with drag queens and trans women would slow progress. They wanted respectability. They wanted acceptance from politicians and the media. And so they sacrificed their most radical members.
By 1973, Sylvia was barred from speaking at the Christopher Street Liberation Day rally. But she refused silence. She stormed the stage, grabbed the microphone, and delivered her searing speech “Y’all Better Quiet Down.”
“One of our main goals now is to destroy… the Human Rights Campaign because I’m tired of sitting on the back of the bumper.”
The crowd booed. Some activists even physically pulled her away. Her words, born of rage and betrayal, exposed the hypocrisy: a movement that claimed liberation but abandoned those who had lit the spark.
What was framed as “strategy” was, in truth, selfishness. And selfishness, Sylvia knew, is a cycle that repeats itself endlessly in politics, in movements, in nations.
Art That Speaks Sylvia: Reclaiming the Erased
Where politics silenced Rivera, art has tried to bring her back. And not with generic tributes, but with works that name her, embody her defiance, and force us to confront the selfishness of her exclusion.
The Banner of Defiance: “Y’all Better Quiet Down”
The Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York created an exhibition under the very title of Rivera’s speech. Protest banners, archival documents, and contemporary works channeled her fury. To see her words on walls, in public space, was to feel the interruption again. No longer a speech drowned out by boos, but a permanent, visual roar.
Keith Mayerson’s Portrait (2023)
In ink and watercolor, Keith Mayerson painted Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera walking arm in arm. The colors are vibrant, their motion undeniable. He refuses to let Sylvia trail behind in history. Side by side, they resist together, forever.
Nelson Santos, POWER TO THE PEOPLE
A neon sculpture inspired by a protest sign held by Marsha P. Johnson, Santos’s work resurrects the era’s radical spirit. While Sylvia’s name is absent, her presence is implicit in the electric demand for visibility.
Tourmaline’s Film: STAR People Are Beautiful People
The artist and activist Tourmaline (Reina Gossett) made a film that reintroduces Sylvia Rivera as she was: raw, radical, unafraid. The film does not mythologize her but shows her as a living human being whose life was both precarious and monumental. It insists that Rivera’s legacy is not a relic—it is a demand that persists.
Statues of Correction
In 2019, New York City announced a planned public monument to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, the first major U.S. statue honoring transgender activists. Though overdue, it represents an attempt to right the wrongs of memory. The stone and bronze will speak where words once failed.
My Painting TRANSEXUAL RIGHTS
In my painting “TRANSEXUAL RIGHTS” I chose the transgender symbol framed inside the triangle, once a mark of persecution. Around it, I scattered fragments of names and insults: “Stonewall Rebellion 1969,” “Hermaphrodite,” “Virginia Prince,” “She Male,” “Sylvia Rivera.” On the border, I wrote Rivera’s own furious words: “One of our main goals now is to destroy… because I’m tired of sitting on the back of the bumper.”
This work was never meant as homage alone. It is confrontation. It demands that viewers feel the same betrayal Rivera felt, not only from society, but from her own movement.
I align myself with these artists because, like them, I refuse silence. Where politics whispered her name and then suppressed it, our art must scream it. Where official narratives flatten heroes, we must insist on the flawed, furious, complicated truth.
Rivera’s exclusion is not a historical footnote, it is a mirror of the present.
From Stonewall to Today: The Same Selfishness in New Masks
Rivera’s story is not just queer history, it is human history. The logic that betrayed her still rules today.
In Gaza and Israel, lives are reduced to bargaining chips, suffering minimized for political alliances.
In the United States, the Trump administration proved how selfish politics can become, bending institutions to fear, prejudice, and personal power.
Across democracies, leaders speak of “compromise” but sacrifice the most vulnerable first, just as the gay movement once sacrificed its trans pioneers.
Oppression does not only come from outside. It thrives inside communities, when “strategy” becomes the mask of betrayal.
A Final Reflection
So what has changed since Stonewall? Have we truly evolved as a society, or do we simply repaint the same betrayals under new banners?
It is tempting to believe that protests, revolutions, or inspiring speeches are enough. They can ignite sparks. They can change laws temporarily. But selfishness always returns, reasserting itself in new forms.
If we are to break this cycle, Rivera’s story teaches us that we need more than words, more than anger, more than revolt. We need a culture of education in altruism, a way of raising generations that refuse to betray the vulnerable, that do not silence inconvenient truths.
And here lies the responsibility of intellectuals, writers, and journalists: their power must lie not in shaping partial narratives, but in telling the complete truth. Partial truth is not truth, it is selfishness dressed up as convenience. This world, if it is ever to change its destiny, must be built not on fragments, but on facts, whole facts. Opinions will always divide us. But facts, laid bare, can open the possibility of agreement even across deep difference.
Until then, Sylvia Rivera’s ghost will remain among us: a reminder that liberation without solidarity is no liberation at all.
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