Major! Page #5

it simply

wasn't going to happen.

It's just, it's a feeling

that you get,

like when you go to a movie

and see something together

and everybody ahs

and gasps at the same time?

That's the feeling,

you just knew, everyone just

looked at one another

and sat down.

Not leaving,

not going anywhere.

You know the girls,

we can put up with some stuff,

you know,

but I guess it was just like

at that time, we were done.

Can't take any more,

this has got to stop here.

After that, you heard

well someone threw a shoe,

someone threw a beer bottle

or whatever have you.

I don't know who threw what,

and it doesn't matter.

All that mattered was

we were bustin' the cops' ass.

And when the community

at large got involved,

all of a sudden it was

white gay guys who had did this,

and lesbians, and oh there

might have been

a drag queen or two there.

Really?

When we frequented that bar,

you know what I mean,

and hung out there.

Across the street is

this little park.

The most disappointing thing

for me is in this park,

they have statues

to commemorate Stonewall.

Two lesbians, two gay guys.

And I'm sure the gay guys

are trying to molest

each other on the bench,

and the lesbians are talking

about moving in

and getting a new cat.

No transgender woman,

and there should be one,

and she should be flying in

and getting ready to land.

Where are we when we were

such a part of this?

Where's the respect

for the folks

that have gone through this?

Like Sylvia Rivera

and Marsha Johnson, you know

f*** me, it's just,

there were other people there

who had a voice before

this happened, who was

trying to make things better.

Girls of color.

Friends, you know.

And they just berated them

and talked about them like

they were drug addicts

and alcoholics.

And in going through this,

they pulle

I understand that it was

important that I was

in Stonewall because

I'm one of the last Black girls

who were there

that's still alive.

That to me is

a pretty amazing thing.

But the thing is for me,

it's not what I did,

it's what I do now.

It's who I help now.

How I train my energies to keep

the agency I work for going.

You know, because there's

girls in prison who need

to hear from us, who need

to know that somebody out here

gives a damn

whether they live or die.

I want things better for the,

for everybody.

Not just my community,

I want thi

And if they would accept

my community just

for who they are, it would

be better for everybody.

We're the last bastion

that you can talk about

and ridicule and throw things

at and beat up and it's okay.

You know some of my girls

have been attacked

by four and five boys,

and my girls went to jail,

the boys went home.

You know, how dare they

make that assumption?

We may not have started

anything, you know?

And if we happen to win

that battle when they fight us,

oh then we get a charge.

Assault to commit murder.

He started this sh*t!

But they don't think about it.

The legal system is off,

the justice system is off,

the police are off.

I mean, California has

some really great laws, yay.

They have some laws

that really want to protect

my trans community, yay.

Do the police read those laws?

No.

If they do something against

a transgender person,

are there any repercussions

for what they've done?

No.

But for me, if you tap that

wallet that they have,

they'll stop f***ing

with my community.

If they gotta pay 'cause

they did

they're not going

to do it anymore.

They're not going to do it

in prison, they're not going

to do it when they arrest us,

they're not going

to do it in jail.

They're going to leave us

alone because they know

that we have some power.

Right now we don't

have any power.

We don't have any power.

I've had some negative

experiences with the police

department in San Francisco

where I had to sue them.

I was not on paperwork

I had given up my number,

and I had changed my life around

and I was in love with this guy

and he pulled a robbery

in my building, and some guy

seen him from behind

and the police came to my house,

and when they went

to put handcuffs on him,

I told them

it wasn't him, it was me.

I ended up going back,

and that's how I got

my second number.

But during that course,

while I was fighting the case,

the deputies that worked

there repeatedly raped me

for several months until

I got tired and I decided

to tell someone about it.

They had to move me because

they were afraid of retaliation

from inside of

the police department because

this officer was well known

and well liked.

I took numerous

lie detector tests

and passed and everything.

And we ended up

settling out of court.

And that's how I ended up

implementing transgender

sensitivity training

inside of the jailhouses,

that was part of my settlement

and that was the most important

part of my settlement

with the Sheriff's Department.

One of the things I love about

my community is we're

a pretty tough f***ing

bunch of cookies,

you know what I mean.

We take the abuse that

we get in the street

from people and what goes on

in our personal lives,

from people that we think

are going to love us anyway,

like family, you know,

and we still survive.

So, in my heart I hope that,

I'm sorry.

That when the dust settles,

my girls will be okay.

I was in New York

for Stonewall.

I was in Danemmora

and Sing Sing, and after

the Attica Riots,

I got sent to Attica.

Spent all my time in there

in a cell getting to meet

the guys who pulled

this thing off, and listened

and watched all the abuses

they were putting

those people through.

They don't need an excuse,

they just run through us.

They run through our families,

they run through our society,

they run through who we are.

I got arrested for

robbing a john in New York,

and then was sent upstate.

I wound up going

to Sing Sing first.

I got out on parole, I went

and stayed with some friends,

and I shaved, of course.

Got a little light foundation,

and colored my hair,

arched my eyebrows,

and lightly dusted,

I don't t

but I lightly dusted,

and I went into parole

and they said that I was trying

to change my appearance

in order to abscond from parole.

And violated me

right there on the spot.

Then they sent me to Dannemora,

which has a mental hospital

on one side of the wall,

prison on the other.

Well they sent me to

the mental hospital first.

I had platinum blonde hair,

about two inches long.

My breasts had been developing

because I'd been on hormones

for years, and I thought

I was the hottest young thing

since white sliced bread.

Got in there, and they,

ooh, did their best

to break my spirit.

They shaved me completely bald.

They shaved off my eyebrows,

they made me walk through

the prison naked, you know.

It was so uh, it was so hard.

On September 12, 1971,

there was an uprising

by prison inmates of

the Attic

which was a maximum-security

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