‘If you are queer, you have no right to condemn the actions of those protesting to protect our rights’

The accounts, pictures, and video flooding out of the Bristol protests have caused an immense outpouring of emotion and opinion across the UK.

Violence on both sides, riot police escalating the situation, helicopter spotlights cutting through the night sky, fires and fear.

It’s an intense response to an intensely scary piece of legislation that is attempting to silence the voices of the people. But you knew that. And like everyone in Bristol and beyond, you have an opinion on what’s going on; an opinion that will be difficult to change.

I’d like to take a second and give any queer people reading this something to consider. If you are queer, you have no right to condemn the actions of those protesting and rioting to protect our right to be heard.

Without rioting and violent protest, the queer rights movement as we know it would not exist. “The first Pride was a riot” is more than a trendy t-shirt slogan, it is a reminder of just how hard people fought to give queer people the freedoms we enjoy today. Just last month we were celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month; have we already forgotten what it took to get us here?

Kit says to remember that the first Pride was a riot. Photo: Jack Joseph

For anyone not versed in queer history, here’s a quick refresher: On June 28, 1969, New York City police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York’s Greenwich Village that served as a safe haven for queer people in a time of particularly punitive laws against LGBTQ+ people.

Officers stormed the bar, beat up patrons, forced people they suspected of cross-dressing to show their genitals and “verify their sex”,  and violently manhandled customers onto Christopher Street. Police raids on gay bars were common at the time, but that night it seemed was the final straw.

An officer hit a lesbian woman about the head as he arrested her; her cries for action led to onlookers throwing objects at police. For the next five nights, riots broke out, as people tired of being beaten down just for existing finally snapped.

On the first anniversary of the uprising, thousands of people took part in a march in NYC, known as “Christopher Street Liberation Day”. This was America’s first Pride march, and the events of Stonewall are recognised as being one of the biggest catalysts in the queer rights movement.

There are important parallels to be drawn between the Stonewall uprising and the recent events in Bristol; protesters receiving violent treatment at the hands of law enforcement, an intense response from people who have simply had enough of unfair treatment, disproportionately  aggressive police actions that escalate peaceful gatherings into violent revolts, and media coverage that all too often takes the side of the oppressors.

Respectability politics have never gotten us anywhere. If we quiet ourselves in response to threats of oppression, and only speak out within the confines of what those in power allow us to do, or what they deem acceptable, then nothing changes.

A Kill The Bill protest in Bristol on March 26. Photo: Simon Holliday

The Stonewall riots brought about arguably the biggest leap forward in the queer rights movement; those protestors did so by reminding those in power that they could not be beaten into submission.

Direct action works, and it’s working today: the Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has been delayed, but we must keep fighting until it is scrapped entirely.

The pioneers of the Stonewall uprising put themselves in harms way to enable you, a queer person, to raise your voice. The Bristol protesters are doing the same to ensure that no-one loses this fundamental right. For any queer person to criticise the Bristol protestors is at best ungrateful and at worst hypocritical. As the situation evolves, I urge all queer people to consider this: don’t forget those who paved the way for us.

Kit Million Ross is an audio journalist, producer and co-host of  the Bristol24/7 Queer Catch-Up podcast. Their work focuses on unheard voices, with a focus on autistic and LGBTQ+ people.

Main photo of a confrontation in Greenwich Village after a gay power march in New York in August 1970: AP

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