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(Burning cop car in front of City Hall, San Francisco, 21 May 1979)From Shaping SF
"Within a day or two of the White Night Riot, flyers appeared throughout the Castro and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods advising everyone to keep quiet. The text of this warning flyer follows:
We may end up doing more time for our rage at the Civic Center than Dan White will do for killing Harvey unless we KEEP QUIET. If you male-ego-trip in a bar, and the wrong person hears you, the cops will know what face to look for in the photos, and where that face hangs out. DON'T TALK. Even if you didn't trash, there's a possibility of a grand jury and a conspiracy indictment, just for being angry enough to think about it. BE QUIET. If you want to file a police brutality suit, get some legal advice first. The National Lawyers' Guild is a good legal resource. They'll say they want to investigate the attack on the Elephant Walk [at 18th & Castro]. But giving info to the cops is like spreading the crabs. Once you begin you can't stop without kwell. And our kwell is SILENCE. We've seen what happens when the D.A. tries an ex-cop--he throws the case, cause he needs the cops to win any case in the future. All he needs us for is defendants. Our defense against the police is each other, our strength is our silence. DON'T COLLABORATE."
[Note: These flyers were created and distributed by LAPV and the Stonewall Coalition. We were particularly concerned about the appeasement faction of the gay male community, i.e., Cleve Jones who we had already heard intended to testify before the Grand Jury fully. This was in part because he had gone around bragging that it was him who had called the rally which led to the riot -- once he got incorrectly targeted for that, the rumors were that he was in panic to obtain immunity. The fact is, anyone knowledgeable about his politics would know he had nothing to do with an event like this.]
LAPV wrote a musical skit about keeping quiet and not collaborating with a possible grand jury, the script of which is in the above-mentioned Meg Barnett Papers. I acted often in this skit, sometimes as the main character, Deborah Dyke. I remember one of the songs I performed, to the tune of a Beatles' song:
You think you are safe here
But it's just not true
Others are in danger
Soon it could be you
Remember the White Riot
Elephant Walk and Peg's Place too
Some vict'ries we've accomplished
But our struggle's far from through
[Note: I remember these and all our wonderful lyrics as being written by Joan Annsfire and Joan Bobkoff.]
The Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade after the riot drew 250,000 to 300,000 marchers, according to later official reports. The mainstream element of the gay community wanted desperately to prove that we were "just like everyone else" and extreme influence was exerted to keep any kind of effective protesting from taking place during the march and rally. Below are two news video compilations from the SF Bay area in June 1979:
SAN FRANCISCO LESBIAN/GAY FREEDOM DAY, 1979 -- PART ONE
June 24, 1979. Here is Bay Area television news coverage of the eighth annual "Gay Freedom Day Parade And Celebration" on Market Street, San Francisco. Coverage begins with film (not video, remember) of Gay Freedom Day Marching Band & Twirling Corps, led by Jon Simms. Also seen and/or heard is future S.F. Mayor the Hon. Willie Brown, Jr., City Attorney Louise H. Renne, and Supervisor Harry Britt. Seen: Lesbian Nurses, Lesbian Chorus, Gay Fathers, Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club, and Bay Area Physicians For Human Rights. There is also a rally celebrating the recently murdered Supervisor Harvey Milk. A strange offshoot of one newscast featured a bitter young boxer named Mick Kowalski, who traveled to the parade in hopes of understanding why his wife left him for another woman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XpAfmLgwjs
SAN FRANCISCO LESBIAN/GAY FREEDOM DAY, 1979 -- PART TWO
At 0:014 you'll see the banner for the Stonewall Coalition, at first just the top of it behind a sign reading "Gay and Angry", then the banner and the right end of it being carried by Amber Hollibaugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBuBiNIh3Bg
Here's a photo of our contingent during that parade:
(Lesbians Against Police Violence marching in Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade, June 24, 1979, San Francisco -- I helped make this banner. Dyke on left end of banner is Sharon Sapphora, my roommate.)
LAPV continued to do activism until 1981. Here's another photo of us during a march that year.
(Lesbians Against Police Violence banner heading for a community march in February 1981. I helped make this banner as well.)
