Sylvia Rivera was an American drag queen (a term she later claimed to hate, rejecting all labels), gay liberation and transgender activist. Along with Marsha P Johnson she was one of the first to resist the police during the Stonewall Riots. Rivera reportedly shouted, “I’m not missing a minute of this, it’s the revolution!” as police started to escort people from the bar. She was one of the first to throw a bottle.
Rivera’s activism had begun during the African-American Civil Rights Movement, continued through the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War and the second-wave feminist movement. In all of these movements she said she felt like an outcast and the only reason people like her were tolerated was because they weren’t afraid to be on the front lines – they couldn’t take away any of her rights because she didn’t have any in the first place.
Rivera and Johnson founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) group and provided a home for young homeless drag queens and trans women of colour so that they would not have to live the way that Rivera and Johnson did growing up, hustling the streets as sex workers to survive.
Rivera was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). She worked on the campaign to pass the New York City Gay Rights Bill with the GAA and was arrested for trying to scale the walls of City Hall in a dress and heels. When they were protesting in support of the New York City Gay Rights Bill there was a single arrest – Rivera. She was the only one out collecting signatures for a petition in the Times Square area and 42nd Street. The New York City Gay Rights Bill took 17 years to pass.
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), an organization dedicated to ending poverty and gender identity discrimination, carries on Rivera’s work on behalf of marginalized persons.