I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire. And it was a raid already. The riots had already started. And they said the police went in there and set the place on fire. They said the police set it on fire because they originally wanted the Stonewall to close, so they had several raids.” – Marsha P. Johnson
In this rare and informative audio the details of that fateful night on June 28, 1969 come from Johnson’s own mouth and puts many of the rumors and folklore of the Stonewall Riots to restonce and for all.
One of the few remaining verified Stonewall riot participants Danny Garvin sadly passed away at the age of 65 in December of 2014.
Not long before his unfortunate death Danny Garvin along with fellow Stonewall veteran Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt were interviewed and described that fateful summer night in 1969.
Danny and Tommy have been noted as “the two most knowledgeable sources” on the historic riots by fellow LGBT historian David Carter.
Danny was there the night it opened (on his birthday in 1967) and became a regular customer of the Stonewall Inn,” David Carter said. “He met his first love there by dancing with him, dated the main doorman (Blonde Frankie), and was roommates with one of the men who worked in the coat check. Danny’s knowledge of the club has contributed a lot to a better understanding of the Stonewall Inn. Fortunately, Danny also happened to walk up the street soon after the June 1969 raid began, and his detailed memories of that night significantly add to our knowledge about the Uprising,” Carter added.
“Danny’s life story is all the more remarkable and historically relevant because his experiences mirrored those of his generation as if he were a gay Zelig,” Carter said. “Danny was in a gay hippie commune before Stonewall and he was roommates with gay activist Morty Manford after Stonewall. Morty Manford’s introduction of Danny Garvin and another gay friend to Manford’s parents precipitated Manford’s coming out to his parents. Morty’s mother Jeanne Manford later founded what became Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, now PFLAG. He hung out with Andy Warhol’s crowd, and he founded the recovery contingent of LGBT marchers in the LGBT Pride March each June.”
Gay men like Danny Garvin are our true heroes of the riots. They have received little or no recognition while others have been given the glory for Stonewall that they do not deserve because of a certain groups revisionist history to promote their own agenda. Without gay men like Danny Garvin and Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt we would not be where we are today.
You can listen to Danny Garvin and Tommy Lanigan Schmidt in their own words recount what happened that night almost 50 years ago on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn.
Filmmaker Scott Calonico’s documentary short, When AIDS Was Funny released audio a few years ago that showed the Reagan administrations chilling and despicable reaction to the mounting problem and deaths of gay men during the AIDS crisis.
Using never-before-heard audio tapes from three separate press conferences, in 1982, 1983, and 1984, When AIDS Was Funny illustrates how the reporter Lester Kinsolving, a conservative (and not at all gay-friendly) fixture in the White House press corps, was consistently scoffed at when he posed urgent questions about the AIDS epidemic. With snickering, homophobic jokes and a disturbing air of uninterest, Speakes dismisses Kinsolving’s concerns about the escalating problem. “Lester was known as somewhat of a kook and a crank (many people still feel the same way),” says Calonico. “But, at the time, he was just a journalist asking questions only to be mocked by both the White House and his peers.”
This disturbing audio puts a face on the homophobic Reagan administration and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that because AIDS affected mostly gay men that the Reagan and his cronies could not be bothered and did not care that American citizens were dying just because they were gay.
It would not be until 1986 that Reagan requested $85 million for AIDS research, but Congress horrified at the low number bumped that figure up to $244 million only to have Reagan try to unsuccessfully rescind $50 million of that figure, but he ultimately agreed to Congress’ figure. In 1987, Reagan proposed cutting the research budget for AIDS down to $214 million. Congress again responded dramatically against Reagen by raising it to about $400 million.
As Barbra Streisand put it in an address to an AIDS Project Los Angeles fundraiser in 1992: “I will never forgive my fellow actor Ronald Reagan for his genocidal denial of the illness’ existence, for his refusal to even utter the word AIDS for seven years, and for blocking adequate funding for research and education which could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
By the end of 1989 when Reagan left office over 115,786 Americans, mostly gay men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States—more then 70,000 of them had died.
Tony Perkins, host of the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch radio show, discussed the #DumpKelloggs boycott with Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov on Monday.
“The Left has lost control of the government – at least, it’s about to – which they have used to basically punish dissenting thought, when it comes to their politically correct agenda. So now there is this, it appears to be [a] rapid move to consolidate their control of corporate America – to use them to be their tool or their weapon of choice,” Perkins said, putting the Kellogg’s boycott of Breitbart News into the context of the 2016 election.
“I think they were thinking they could just get away with this,” Solov replied. “I mean, they could have, if they wanted to, stop advertising on our site and frankly not made any announcement about it. But they came out and they made the announcement that they were blacklisting us because Breitbart.com and its readers – and by the way, we have 45 million readers…”
Perkins interjected, “I love to have our articles up there on Breitbart because we get a lot of feedback when they’re up there because a lot of our conservative Christian listeners, readers, go to Breitbart for information.”
“This is a political hit,” Solov continued. “It is in part, as you mentioned, because Steve Bannon is now in the White House, and it is an effort to denigrate, I think, the mainstream American values that we hold dear. Breitbart is, as you know, the most pro-family, pro-traditional American values news brand in the English language.”
Yes Princess Tiny Meat Tony, Kellogg’s is our weapon of choice and we are all going to become cereal killers.
Former KKK Grand Wizard and GOP Louisiana State Representative David Duke: Donald Trumps Alt-Right By Me!
Former one-term Republican Louisiana State Representative, white nationalist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan has praised Donald Trump and his Alt-Right opinions.
Yesterday, Louisiana-based white nationalist and U.S. Senate candidate David Duke reacted to the news of Hillary Clinton’s upcoming speech about Donald Trump’s ties to the alt-right, a racist movement championed by Duke, by noting that Trump speaks just like alt-right leaders. Duke said that Clinton “is really concerned and really scared because she realizes that there’s a sleeping tiger in this country, European-Americans, that are waking up to the realization that every right they have—the real racism in America is against white people.”
“No candidate in this country would dare even stand up and say, ‘Yes, I definitely am going to defend the rights and the heritage of European-Americans,’” he continued. “One can go on to say, ‘Yes I want to respect the rights of all but I believe our people have rights too and the ethnic cleansing of America has got to stop.’ I believe this is a sleeping tiger that is easily awakened.”
Trump, Duke went on to say, “has energized European-Americans in sort of the implicit statements he makes, such as ‘take America back,’ and we’re going to take America back.”
Duke is also a known associate of Family Research Council hate group leader Tony Perkins who in 1996 while managing the unsuccessful U. S. Senate campaign of Woody Jenkins, Perkins “paid Duke $82,500 for his mailing list.” Despite Perkins’ denials the document authorizing the payment to Duke carried Perkins’ signature.
“Porno Pete” Peter LaBarbera of D-List anti-LGBT hate group Americans for Truth About Homosexuality is back in the saddle in his assless chaps once again spewing anti-gay propaganda on any little rinky-dink right wing radio show that will have him.
LaBarbera appeared on “Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show,” last Tuesday alongside Matt “Bam-Bam” Barber of the right-wing extremist shyster law group the Liberty Counsel claiming that the gay rights movement is “a liberal cult,” “an anti-God movement” and a “sin movement.”
“You know, I sort of see this as a liberal cult, this homosexual revolution. Everybody’s joining it who, you know, who’s basically gotten rid of their Christian understanding of the world. They’ve just rejected God. It’s an anti-God movement. When you would purport to redefine humanity, redefine the rules of humanity, and let’s, you know, people are talking about the transgender issue now, but let’s remember the gay revolution started with “transgenders”. It was drag queens at that Stonewall bar who started throwing bottles and such at the police. And so we’re in a cult here, it’s a liberal cult, and a lot of corporate America has bent the knee, and many, many people, I think you once said, Matt, you think over half the evangelical Christians will accommodate themselves to this sin movement, and I fear you’re right.”
Mike Rogers, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Raw Story, and well know LGBT blogger and gay rights activist in Washington, D.C. filled in for Ed Shultz yesterday on his nationally syndicated radio show The Ed Shultz Showand “flipped” the tables on ex-HGTV employees Jason and David Benham who played the victim card, blamed the gay agenda, and not only invoked the name of Andrew Sullivan for protection but then proceeded make a bigoted statement by calling Sullivan “one of your people”
Listen to Rogers spank the homophobic twins courtesy of Rogers himself and The Ed Shultz Show
LGBT radio host and activist Michelangelo Signorile, host of the Sirius XM Progress radio show named for him took a call from John in Houston, Texas who identified himself as not Republican, not Democrat” but rather, “a 100 percent American” who immediately started to attack President Obama with the same Fox News and Republican false talking points. Signorelli was having none of it though and using the truth and facts put the tea bagging patriot in his place but good.
“… But you was [sic] talking about the President carrying 49 percent of Hispanics, 87 percent of Hispanics, but just like I said, it’s, uh, free money is votes, and I know for a fact, I’m a, I haul all over Texas, I see it all, I been there, done that, ….”
Michelangelo immediately pounces on the “free money” assertion asking him, “what do you mean, ‘free money’?” To which John replies: “How many Hispanics as you call them, come over here, and I’ll give you examples of the people that I know, that come over here and haven’t worked a day in their lives, and they’re getting welfare, they’re getting Social Security …” Signorile comes back at him with the conservative’s Achilles heel, facts, pointing out:
“First of all, there are no immigrants who are undocumented getting any federal money. The people who are getting the lion’s share of federal dollars because they are poor are white people … Do you know that the majority of people on welfare are what John in Houston is, ’100 percent American’ white people?… The majority of people on unemployment are white people. The majority of people on every program are white people. So this argument, it really wears thin … the idea that people voted for the President because he’s given them money, no. People who voted for Mitt Romney were getting government money themselves. They’re rich people on welfare. You know those people? They’re really rich and they have all kinds of tax loopholes, and they don’t pay as much taxes as you do.”
Well that of course didn’t sit well with the caller who probably doesn’t have a pot to piss and depends on armadillo road kill to feed his family. So being so brainwashed by the GOP’s lies he just has to defend the very people who have ruined his quality of life in the first place with their greed.
Why are you against rich people? I mean, they didn’t take it away from you…”
Michelangelo responds perfectly: “I’m not against rich people, I want rich people to pay their fair share and not get tax loopholes. Mitt Romney paid 12 percent in taxes while the average American is paying 30 percent taxes.”
Again John comes back with a typical right wing talking point, this time based in his religious convictions: “Well, what I’m saying is, 10 percent’s good enough for the good Lord, why isn’t it good enough for the American government?”
And that is where Michelangelo goes in for the kill.
“We cannot run this country on 10 percent, of everybody giving 10 percent of their income, and still have roads, and highways and infrastructure and bridges. You like those bridges, you like all those roads you drive in Texas? Your Governor [Rick Perry], right? He slashed the state budget, he slashed the fire department, we were just talking about it earlier, and the federal government had to come in and bail him out. I’m sick of bailing you people out, and your big giant state. You should be paying more money. You got a lot of people there, and your Governor has the gall to ask for a bailout from the President of the United States? What a moocher he is.
John, are you proud of your last Governor, before Rick Perry? Because he took this country … first he ran your state into the ground, and your next Governor had to be a moocher and ask for federal dollars, and then he ran the country into the ground, and took us to war based on lies, and thank God that President Obama saved this economy from George Bush, who bankrupted us with his war, and bankrupted us because he let the banks bilk everybody of billions of dollars … Man, John, you have some losers, losers who’ve run your state, and you have the gall to talk about President Obama, man, or anybody else, when you have all of these moochers and losers who’ve run your state? Give me a break.”
Deeeeeelicious.
You can listen to the entire exchange in the audio clip below.
Alan Colmes of the nationally syndicated talk-radio show “The Alan Colmes Show” (distributed by Fox News Radio no less) ANNIALITED professional “D-List” AFTHA (Americans for Truth About Homosexuality) hate group leader “Porno Pete” LaBarbera during a appearance on his show yesterday:
Porno Pete was left speechless when Colmes asked him to spell out his plan to ban homosexuality. LaBarbera repeatedly refused to answer Colmes’ question about what he thinks the punishment for homosexual behavior should be, finally admitting: “I don’t know what the punishment should be.” “So you want these laws on the books but you don’t know what to do about them?” Colmes asked. “You keep talking about criminalizing sodomy and using the country of Jamaica as a model for that but you’re not telling me how you would enforce it and then what the punishment should be. So you don’t have a well-rounded idea of how to approach the idea of criminalizing it.”
Why can’t more media people be like this?
LaBarbera recently has been campaigning and spreading hate in Jamaica to push for more stringent anti-gay laws where homosexuality is punishable up to ten years in jail and hate crimes against the LGBT community is at a world high.
