STONEWALL, from p.4
said. “We and others are looking to make sure that it remains a place that speaks to the history of the LGBT rights movement.” Berman said GVSHP will continue the push for recognition of other sites. “We’re glad the city is taking this first step,” he said. Out lesbian Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who represents the West Village, said, “It has been a good year for gay people, with the Irish voting for love and now the city administration finally recognizing a key location for the LGBT community. It’s a start.” She said that the Wooster Street Firehouse, where GAA housed its community center in the early 1970s, is in many ways “more compelling.” And she said that “there are sites of gay clubs in Harlem that are far more meaningful because it is where people — particularly African-American people — had their early gay identification.” Glick credited the de Blasio administration with moving relatively quickly on this. “One could ask why the Bloomberg administration paid no attention,” she said. Despite the strong community support for the contemplated designation, at least some of those who participated in the Rebellion balk at a special status for the bar. One of them, Jim Fouratt, recently made public a letter he wrote to the National Parks Conservation Association arguing, “I very strongly support the designation of the Sheridan Square park [Christopher Park] becoming a national park and designated a historical landmark because of what happened that night in the street in front of the Stonewall Inn. I am very opposed to designating a business that was run by organized crime in contempt of the law and with the knowledge of the local police force as a symbol of Lesbian and Gay liberation. It is a private business still in operation. To me it is a symbol of oppression and not liberation. It would be appropriate to mark the street location as the spark that set off a series of events that forever changed the visibility and fight for equality for lesbians and gay men of all gender expression throughout the world.” GayCityNews.nyc | June 11 - 24 , 2015
Councilmember Johnson has a very different perspective on the bar, saying, “The first time I visited NYC in 2000 — the year before I moved here — the first place I wanted to go was the Stonewall Inn. I stood outside. I was just 18. I felt like a deep connection to this place that I had read and heard so much about. To now be the councilmember representing this district and have a chance to vote on it is incredibly meaningful and special.” On Facebook, John O’Brien, a longtime gay activist and historian and, like Fouratt, a Stonewall Rebellion participant who was active in the Gay Liberation Front that came out of it, praised the move toward landmarking the Stonewall.
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“Few sites more powerfully embody the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, and for achieving a fairer and more just society, than the Stonewall Inn.” “Like many such landmarks whether around wars, revolutions, or other sites that were the scene of important history, the actual previous usage of the site is not the essential consideration, but what a site came to represent,” he wrote. O’Brien and veteran activist Rick Landman, who gives gay historical tours of New York, cited the nearby Triangle Shirtwaist Factory where 145 women workers perished in a 1911 fire that led to workplace safety improvements throughout the nation. Tree, a 76-year old bartender at the Stonewall “off and on for 45 years” and himself at the Stonewall the day the Rebellion broke out, said, “This makes us feel great. It’s about time.” He reported that business at the bar is good and is made up of a high percentage of tourists, both gay and non-gay, from around the world who know what Stonewall means to history. Duell Management, which owns the Stonewall, did not return a call for comment on how the company feels about the potential landmarking.
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