LGBTQ+ people have been organising for their communities and wider social justice for many years. Pride month marks the Stonewall Riots of June 27th 1969, where the LGBTQ+ community rioted against police officers in response to discriminatory violence and harassment. The LGBTQ+ community have a history of protest, but also of community organising – something we can look up to and learn from as a community development charity.
As a group that has experienced violence from the state, LGBTQ+ people often had to learn to provide for each other. Through squats, ‘hustling’ for rent, and campaigning, groups have set up community centres and housing. They’ve provided healthcare, distributed food, and created a space for people to be welcomed.
We can look to the STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries for inspiration on radical community housing. Rivera and Johnson – founders of the group – saw the need to organize homeless trans street youth in New York City in the 1970s. Both Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson were themselves homeless: “Marsha and I just decided it was time to help each other and help our other kids” “We fed people and clothed people. We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent. We didn’t want the kids out in the streets hustling.”
In Brixton, we can look to the squatted Gay Community Centre. The shared garden provided space for collective meals, making music and theatre, banner making, planting flowers, mending household items, or just hanging out and chilling. We can also look to the Black Lesbian and Gay centre which ran from 1985-2000, founded in response to the whiteness of the existing gay spaces. They organised a helpline, advice, a conference and outreach alongside other community activities.
One of the most inspirational LQBTQ+ solidarity movements was Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) which the iconic film ‘Pride’ is based on. They demonstrated the power of true solidarity, showing how we can come together in mutual support – something which is essential for our work in the context of increasingly divided and hateful times. In Mark Ashton’s words: “When you think about it, it is quite illogical to actually say ‘Well, I’m gay and I’m into defending the gay community, but I don’t care about anything else.’ It’s ludicrous! It’s important that if you’re defending communities then you’re also defending all communities, not just one, and that’s the main reason I’m involved.” – Mark Ashton, LGSM.
This blog post by Jamie at the People’s History Museum writes how “Black and Asian and LGBTQ+ organisers formed personal and often lasting relationships with mining communities, in some cases introducing miners to marginalised people for the first time, humanising rather than othering them. This led to profound changes in perspective for some of these miners, who went on to reciprocate the solidarity they had been shown – most notably campaigning against the anti-LGBTQ+ law Section 28, and to push the Labour Party to include Lesbian and Gay rights in their party conference the year following the strike. Without the block voting by the NUM, the motion would have failed:
“You have worn our badge ‘Coal Not Dole’ and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will support you. It won’t change overnight, but now a hundred and forty thousand miners know… about blacks and gays and nuclear disarmament and we will never be the same.” – Dai Donovan, Onllwyn miner, NUM.”
Recently, a group inspired by LGSM was founded: Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants. Through fundraising and direct action, they stand in solidarity with all migrants and refugees, building on a proud history of queer solidarity to say: no one is illegal.
LQBTQ+ people have been organising for our communities for many years – including communities of queer identity, but also local communities and communities of other shared experiences and characteristics. Whether through a desire to contribute to community or driven by shared experience of marginalisation and violence from the state, queer people are a key part of community organising in Oxfordshire.
Through community kitchens, swap shops, gardening groups, or health campaigns – to name a few projects – people provide for overlapping needs and build power together. We have a lot to learn from the generosity, skills, and solidarity of these groups.
With increasing hateful journalism and restrictions to rights, widening divisions and growing harassment, we respond by standing together in solidarity more firmly. Community development has to be inclusive to work well.
You can read about actual public opinion on Trans identity here: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/public-attitudes-towards-trans-people
Learn more about the groups mentioned above here:
STAR https://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-73/
Gay Community Centre Brixton https://www.qxmagazine.com/2023/07/it-was-the-1970s-and-ian-townson-writes-about-the-brixton-gays-that-fought-for-liberation/
Black Lesbian and Gay centre https://www.pressreader.com/uk/evening-standard-west-end-final-extra-es-magazine/20240308/281685439807055
LGSM https://phm.org.uk/blogposts/1984-miners-strike-solidarity-marginalised-communities/
LGSMigrants https://www.lgsmigrants.com/
I have used a mixture of terminology in this blog post, including LGBTQ+, queer, gay, gay and lesbian. Different terms have been used across time and I have tried to use appropriate words according to the project and timeline being described.