Letters: S.F.'s Pink Triangle symbolizes LGBTQ+ empowerment. Why vandalism won't change that
Regarding 'Man arrested in vandalism to S.F.'s Pink Triangle celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month' (Crime, SFChronicle.com, June 19): The vandalism of the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks this week is an example of the struggles our community has faced throughout time.
The damage should remain because it sends a powerful message. We will wear this scar as a badge of resilience, courage and our continuing struggle for equality for the rest of Pride Month.
For the past three decades, the Pink Triangle has been a symbol of what can happen if hatred is allowed to go unchecked. The graffiti and defaced panels of the Pink Triangle remind us of the ongoing discrimination and hatred experienced by many in the community.
If this can happen here in LGBTQ+ friendly San Francisco, think what might happen in other less accepting places in the U.S. and around the world. This hate empowers us.
We will remain our true selves, speak up and keep living our lives as joyfully as possible. There is no going back in the closet as some would like us to do.
Patrick Carney, co-founder, Pink Triangle, San Francisco
Don't wait
I'm not a green card holder nor an undocumented immigrant. I'm not attending a university on a student visa.
I'm not a corporate executive fearing my political views will bar me from federal contracts.
I'm not a lawyer who's been coerced into performing pro bono work to undo diversity, equity and inclusion.
I'm not connected to any university, museum or nonprofit organization that had its tax-exempt status and/or funding canceled for promoting policies inimical to government ones.
I'm not employed by any federal, state or local government.
I'm not a university professor, teacher or student.
I'm not personally affected by rising consumer prices.
I don't live near oil or gas drilling.
I'm not worried about the financial stability of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Department.
I'm not affected by dictates issued on and after Jan. 20.
In 1946, German Pastor Martin Niemöller berated himself for failing to oppose Nazi attacks on Communists, Socialists, trade unionists and Jews, until he, too, was attacked and no one remained to speak on his behalf.
I'm not waiting.
Paul L. Newman, Merion Station, Pa.
Trump keeps promise
Nearly 80 million Americans voted for Donald Trump, including eight counties in California that were blue in 2020. President Trump is keeping to his promise to all Americans, even if you didn't vote for him.
Trump is president of the United States, and that makes him accountable to U.S. citizens, not those who are here illegally.
Christine Larson, Castro Valley
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Chicago Tribune
29 minutes ago
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Today in Chicago History: Divvy debuts downtown
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on June 28, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) Vintage Chicago Tribune: Chicago Cubs who have hit for the cycle1950: The Chicago Cubs' Roy Smalley hit for the cycle against the St. Louis Cardinals. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Pelé, Hamm, Beckham, Rapinoe, Messi and more. When soccer's big names came to play1998: With hundreds of young fans screaming her name, Mia Hamm notched her eighth career hat trick — three goals in a 20-minute span — when the United States women's national team defeated Germany 4-2 at Soldier Field. 2010: Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge's 'Midnight Crew,' a federal jury convicted him on all three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying in a lawsuit about the torture of suspects in attempts to obtain confessions. He was sentenced to prison and released in 2014. Burge died in 2018. Also in 2010: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Chicago's gun ban was 'unenforceable,' stating Americans nationwide have a constitutional right to have a handgun at home for self-defense, even in cities which until then had outlawed handguns. Yet, the court stopped short of overturning the ban. 2013: Divvy began its bicycle-sharing program in Chicago. Community group retrieves over 60 Divvy bikes from Lake Michigan since JuneThere were some initial technical glitches, but its operations expanded from 68 docking stations to a presence in every city ward. 2019: Cookie Monster from 'Sesame Street' visited the Art Institute of Chicago, Wrigley Field, The Bean and Navy Pier to celebrate the program's 50th anniversary. 'I'm excited to have Cookie Monster in Chicago, going to all the landmarks and taking pictures. … My Chicago home and my 'Sesame' work life are coming together,' said Highland Park resident David Rudman, puppeteer of Cookie Monster for 20 years. Also in 2019: Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Illinois Gaming Act into law, looking to bring in an additional $350 million in annual state revenue, and opening the door to sports wagering and other growth opportunities for gambling operators. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Stonewall Uprising: A Look at Transgender Activists Who Led the Movement
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Stonewall Uprising, a pivotal moment in the LGBTQ+ rights fight, occurred 56 years ago and sparked a movement led in part by two transgender activists: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. The Context The Stonewall uprising began after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, sparking protests and pushback from the local LGBTQ+ community. Johnson and Rivera emerged as two community leaders from the movement, though there is debate about their exact involvement during the protests. Earlier this year, the Trump administration sparked backlash after removing references to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website. Meanwhile, the Pride Month display at the Stonewall National Monument excluded transgender pride flags this year, according to ABC News. LGBTQ+ activists have raised concerns about attempts to erase the history of transgender activists this year. What To Know The exact history of Stonewall is complicated, and accounts from participants have varied over the years. Who exactly threw the first brick at Stonewall, for instance, has been debated, and there remains no clear consensus on the question. Still, Johnson and Rivera emerged from Stonewall as two of the most prominent leaders in New York's LGBTQ+ community who would shape the movement for decades to come. The uprising began early on June 28, 1969, when patrons at the bar fought back against police harassment during a raid. The riots continued for about six days and drew national attention to the LGBTQ+ rights cause. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty Johnson had said she was not at Stonewall when the uprising began and showed up a bit later. But she was among the most prominent participants in the days-long riots, resisting police after they raided the bar. In one well-reported account of the riots, Johnson climbed up a lamppost to drop a heavy object onto a police car. Rivera, who was 17 years old at the time of the riots, had also said that she was in attendance, although some historians have questioned whether she was present at Stonewall on the first night of the riot. Historian David Carter wrote in 2019 for The Gay City News that activist Bob Kohler, who was present at the riots, told him Rivera was not at Stonewall. But the debate about who was at Stonewall when is "pointless and silly," Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States, told Newsweek. He said it's important to look at the activists' work after Stonewall, such as the founding of Street Transvestite Activists Revolutionaries (STAR) and the first halfway house for young gender non-conforming individuals. STAR was an organization founded in 1970 by Johnson and Rivera to support transgender people. It was an early activist group for trans rights that went on to inspire others in the movement. At the time, notably, the term "transgender" was not in use, so the term "drag queen" was used to describe Johnson and Rivera, though they are considered to be transgender. They had also used the term "transvestite," which is now considered outdated or offensive by many, despite its historical use. Héctor Carrillo, a professor of sociology and sexuality & gender studies, told Newsweek it is "not automatic" that all drag queens at Stonewall would think of themselves as transgender, as the trans movement "didn't crystallize until the 1990s." While activists like Johnson and Rivera are now recognized as pioneers of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, at the time, the transgender community was not "idolized" by many gay and lesbian people, Bronski said. "Back then, often the queer community, the more mainstream queer community, was not particularly open to trans people, and for some reasons—if trans people went into a bar, police might be likely to raid the bar. Trans people were more hassled on the streets by police," he said. Vincent Stephens, an associate dean of diversity and inclusion at Boston University's College of Arts & Sciences, told Newsweek activists like Johnson and Rivera were "integral to really being at the forefront of liberation." After Stonewall, groups like the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) were founded to advance the acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, he said. But those groups had many "internal fissures" that caused women and people of color to break off. This led to the creation of STAR. "In many ways, they were integral to articulate the needs and concerns of gender nonconforming people," Stephens said. "They also exposed in many ways a tension within the queer community, which is that some people who were very focused on concerns of gay men and the concerns of lesbians but weren't necessary addressing concerns of gender-nonconforming people. STAR is an early example of gender non-conforming people organizing and saying, 'We are integral to this.'" The two continued working on causes including AIDS and homelessness throughout their lives, as well as remaining active in the battle for LGBTQ+ rights. Stonewall Anniversary Comes as Many View New Attacks on LGBTQ+ Community This year's anniversary of the riots comes as many in the LGBTQ+ community see setbacks in a legal sense, as well as a shift in public opinion against gay and trans rights. The Trump administration's removal of mentions of the transgender community from the Stonewall National Monument website is among those concerns. Bronski said the erasure of the transgender community cannot be viewed "in isolation." Those who oppose gay rights have realized they cannot push for the eradication of the gay community from public life, but could still "focus on the most vulnerable of those people, which is trans community," he said. "I think it's really telling that they didn't get rid of all of LGBT, but just the T. I think they knew that getting rid of LGB would cause complete outrage, but you can get away with getting rid of the T because there's enough ambivalence and lack of understanding about transgender people," he said. A key part of the legacy of Stonewall is remembering that 1969 wasn't all that long ago, Stephens said. "Many of the fights that LGBTQ+ people have been fighting are relatively recent fights, and the fight is not over," he said. "We have to think about the long-term vision for how we want to exist as human beings and as contributors to society. Stonewall reminds us that we have to sometimes get up, take risks and advocate for ourselves." Every movement "needs a moment," and Stonewall is that for the LGBTQ+ rights movement, Bronski said. While LGBTQ+ Pride Month has become "very commercialized," it's still important to remember the deeper meaning behind the role of power in society and how that can harm people. "There is a great lesson to be learned that what happens to the most vulnerable people can happen to anyone," he said. What People Are Saying Héctor Carrillo, a professor of sociology and sexuality & gender studies, told Newsweek: "The Stonewall Uprising acquired enormous cultural symbolism. It came to be seen as marking the beginning of the LGBTQ movement, even when there had been other instances of gay and lesbian protest before. Those include the Mattachine Society's picketing and the Compton Cafeteria riot in San Francisco in 1966. GLAAD criticized the Trump administration's move to remove references to the trans community from the Stonewall National Monument website in February: "The Stonewall Uprising – a monumental moment in the fight for LGBTQ rights – would not have happened without the leadership of transgender and gender non-conforming people. The tireless work of Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and countless other trans women of color paved the way and continue to inspire us. You can try to erase our history, but we will never forget those who came before us and we will continue to fight for all those who will come after us."
San Francisco Chronicle
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Leaving behind her husband and two young children, Carolina was flown to an ICE detention center in Arizona that same day. Carolina is among dozens of people that local advocates estimate have been arrested in the Bay Area this month in stepped-up operations by federal immigration authorities, as the Trump administration seeks to fulfill a campaign promise by boosting deportation numbers. The effort has been both expansive and disjointed, advocates say, going beyond promises to deport 'the worst of the worst ' while splitting families apart and leaving state officials scrambling for answers. While federal authorities have long had discretionary power to reject asylum applications and other temporary protections that allow people to remain in the U.S., previous administrations have typically used the tactic on a case-by-case basis, said Carolina's attorney, Hayden Rodarte, who focuses on asylum applications for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. 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Inside the information vacuum, local networks of immigration advocates, attorneys and courtroom observers have worked to piece together everything they know about the cases, in hopes of better understanding how ICE operations are unfolding in the Bay Area. Catherine Seitz, the legal director at the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, said people have been arrested when they show up for a meeting with ICE during their removal proceedings, an often lengthy legal process. Those meetings typically happen once a year; ICE checks that the cases are still pending and people typically return home, Seitz said. In addition, ICE is detaining people, including those seeking asylum, who arrive to immigration courts in San Francisco and Concord for scheduled hearings. In some cases, government attorneys are attempting to remove people who have been here for less than two years by requesting their cases to be dismissed. Immigration officials then detain people and pursue expedited removal proceedings, a measure that is typically used at airports or at the border, Seitz said. 'The confusing part is, under the last administration, (a dismissed case) was a good thing,' Seitz said, adding that people could then move forward with their asylum petitions. Seitz said that by using expedited removals, the government can typically move forward with deporting someone without going before a judge. This was the case for Carolina, who arrived in the U.S. along with one of her children in January 2024, joining her husband and older child. Carolina, who is from an Indigenous rural area of Guatemala, applied for asylum while citing the violence and persecution from the government there. 'What hurts us most is seeing the children suffer through this,' Carolina's sister said in a statement translated from K'iche' and provided by immigration attorneys. 'Our country has so much violence and we fled to this country with the hopes of finding joy here. But now we're seeing things worsen here with family separations.' There is no removal order for Carolina's husband and children, and the rest of the family's asylum cases remain pending before immigration court in Concord, Rodarte said. Because federal agencies have not released information on the arrests, advocates and attorneys have sought to use their networks to keep an unreliable count of the number of people detained. Last weekend, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside of an ICE facility in San Francisco after immigrants said they had received orders to check in with the federal agency — spurring concerns from advocates that officials were planning to detain people with detention circumstances similar to Carolina's. Though a handful of immigrants showed up Saturday and Sunday, the office remained closed and ICE officials did not detain anyone, later saying that the closure was due to protests. ICE enforcement in the Bay Area has differed from Los Angeles, where the agency has targeted car washes and other workplaces, as well as gathering spots for day laborers such as Home Depot parking lots, to take people into custody — sparking conservative support along with widespread protests and accusations of racial profiling. Trump has waffled on the tactics, at times saying migrant workers are dangerous and take jobs that could go to Americans, and at other times saying they are ' almost impossible to replace.' But with the Department of Homeland Security this week reversing instructions for ICE to pause raids on farms, meat packing plants, restaurants and hotels, advocates for immigrants worry that the more aggressive actions ICE has taken in Los Angeles and parts of the Central Valley could happen in the Bay Area. Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden, said the Trump administration appears intent on reaching arrest quotas of 3,000 people per day. To achieve those goals, ICE has begun targeting immigrants who have been vetted and given a legal status to stay in the country, versus focusing on only those with criminal histories. There aren't enough people with criminal backgrounds to meet the quotas that the White House has set, Houser said. 'When you set quotas at the White House of arrests,' he said, 'ICE is going to take the easiest path to get their hands on people that they can bring into detention.' Since Trump's second term started, ICE said it has arrested over 236,000 people who were in the country illegally and deported more than 207,000, below the administration's goals but a significant increase from recent years. In his first term, Trump deported 1.5 million people, while Biden had deported 1.1 million people as of February 2024, according to Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. The detainment of more people poses other challenges for immigration courts. There are currently roughly 700 federal immigration judges — a decrease after Trump fired judges in California, Louisiana and other states — and a backlog of nearly 3 million pending cases due in part to a spike in people seeking asylum since 2022, according to government data. In many cases, it can take someone going through a removal proceeding nearly 10 years to get ahead of a judge, said Carl Shusterman, a Los Angeles immigration attorney. 'If he's just going to put another million people a year in immigration court,' Shusterman said, 'it'll take 15 to 20 years to get a hearing.'
