Martin Boyce is a Stonewall Riot (Uprising) activist, sharing the story of one of the most pivotal queer/trans action in history. Martin was 19 years old at Stonewall and was part of the uprising.
The Stonewall Riots (also known as the Stonewall Uprising or the Stonewall Rebellion) were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village 2SLGBTQIA+ bars, and neighbourhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered a watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in Canada and the United States.
Though the uprising didn’t start the gay rights movement, it was a night that inspired many to take up political activism and led to the creation of many gay rights organizations – including the Gay Liberation Front, Human Rights Campaign, and GLAAD.