spotlight: PRIDE los angeles LOS


OWNING OUR PRIDE by joel martens


ANGELES PRIDE


years ago, members of the Los Angeles LGBT community decided it was time to start something… It had been almost a year after the Stonewall Inn riots had taken place in


1970s New York City and nearly three since a local protest at Los Angeles’ Black Cat bar, which had taken place in 1967. Morris Kight (Gay Liberation Front founder) Reverend Bob Humphries (United States Mission founder) and Reverend Troy Perry (Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder) decided that a commemoration for Stonewall was the demarcation date. To mark the event, they settled on a Gay Liberation Parade down Hollywood Boulevard, starting by most accounts in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Turned out that 1970 was a good year for the LGBT movement, with processions planned and executed within days of each other in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, during June, now know as Pride month. Homosexuality was still illegal and the process of getting a


permit nearly sidelined the entire event in California. Police Chief Edward M. Davis was quoted as saying, “As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hol- lywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.” Fees for the event reportedly exceeded $1.5 million, requiring the assistance of the American Civil Liber- ties Union. Several California Superior Court decisions later, they ordered the police commissioner to issue a parade permit, citing the “constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.” Several years later and after a one-year hiatus, the parade returned in 1974 and the idea of adding a festival as a culmination to it was added. Thus, the first Pride Festival was born, featuring rides, games, food and beverages with information booths, all set in a Hollywood parking lot at Sunset and Cherokee. Fast forward now, to 2017 and the world looks very different


for the LGBTQ+ community. There have been many powerful changes and yet, if we have learned anything during the passage of time, especially on the heels of last year’s election and the assault gathering on such milestones, is that our work is in no way


34 RAGE monthly | JUNE 2017


ALEXEI ROMANOFF


OWN YOUR PRIDE A DISCOURSE WITH


History stands as the greatest teacher, in that it offers lessons on how to move


forward without carrying forward the mistakes of the past. Everything we experi- ence, helps to make up who we become individually and as a community. That’s why it’s vital to treasure our stories, especially from those who


helped to create the world we live in now. It wasn’t so long ago that being LGBT wasn’t something you could even discuss, let alone being able to


live “Out and Proud” in the manner we do today. Alexei Romanoff, Grand Marshal for Los Angeles’ #ResistMarch is one of our treasured elders. He was one of the city’s early activists and his stories are ripe with powerful stories from which we can glean valuable lessons. Cataloging those histories is a part of what we hope to do here atThe Rage Monthly and Alexei has a wealth of information to pull from. Below is a small sampling of what he has to share.


by joel martens


Please tell us a little about what got you started as an activist. I’ve told the story many times about


the man who inspired me to do the things I have done in my life and to this day I don’t know his real name. I was about 14 and we hung out on 6th Avenue and 42nd Street at Bryant Park in New York. We were called the “trunkers” because our parents were in show business and while they were performing, we would go up there and hang out. We came in contact with this older gentleman, he was 86 at the time and he would tell us what it was like to be gay in 1890, when he was 20-years-old. To this day, I know him only by the


name, “Mother Bryan” and he would sit and tell us about life and about things he’d experienced. We were young and not all of us got it, but some of us did. He told us, “When you’re my age and you’re ready to leave this earth—if you haven’t left your community and the world as a whole in a better place—you haven’t really lived.” That’s his direct quote. I sat there and got chills and went on to live my life according to what he said. Please tell us a little about what Pride means to you. I have been doing this for more than


50 years and was a part of it, before it was called Pride. The word comes from P.R.I.D.E., [Personal Rights In Defense Education] which we started just before the raids at the Black Cat occurred. Out of that, our newsletter became the Pride Advocate, which is now the magazine The Advocate and the publisher of the Advocate was in the group. Nobody would let us meet, there was a lot of us who came together, but we couldn’t find a place to meet that would handle everyone involved. There was a place on Santa Monica Boulevard, I forget the name, and the owner let us meet there, but only after the bar was closed because it was dangerous for him, too. I think it’s amazing that so few people know about the Black Cat event, or that it predates the Stonewall riots. It was two and a half years before Stonewall. The difference was that this was an organized rally, a demonstration and not a riot. I don’t mean to take anything away from Stonewall, but there’s a little bit of difference in that. Both point to the same thing about what we wanted, just to be accepted as human beings. Bars were really the only place for us


to gather together. I’ll mention too, that at none of the bars could you see inside,


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