People's Revolutionary

Sylvia Rivera was a proud, passionate, dedicated and strong political activist. She has inspired thousands if not more to take up the banners of individual freedom, of people's revolution, of gay/trans rights. She was the torchbearer of the Stonewall Riots, and to me the very personification of the late 1960s in America.

Political activists and her friends seem to have declared many interpretations of the sources of her strength and her prominence in our histories. I wish I knew exactly what to say that would unite us once again, as she did, around the issues she cared about. What I can do is to iterate, or re-iterate, that her so-called weaknesses, drug addiction, homelessness, prostitution, etc. were not signs of moral turpitude from which she had to be redeemed but were what fed her revolutionism. Perhaps when one has been living on the street from age of ten in a destructive, hostile and dangerous world, there is great motivation to try to change one's environment. I believe that her gift in doing so was due in part to great intelligence, to great perceptiveness, to great compassion, to a deep understanding of the way the world works politically and socially, but perhaps also due to the greatest possible ingrained in her very being love for her sisters and the knowledge that peace and justice are not abstract distant goals but matters for action in the here and now. She said to me once that she was the heart of the world, and knowing her, I believe that is true.

This is all a longwinded way to assert that Sylvia was free, not a tool for anybody, and that her freedom came from herself. To try to capture her as a representative for one kind of activism over another or to try to characterize her as simply one more heroine of the movement for change is a mistake. She was dedicated, she was powerful, and she sought unity and liberation for her sisters and all who had suffered from social injustice, but she was able to be that for us because she wanted to. That to me is her individuality, her liberation, and an ethic to rejoice in. Do because you wish to, not because you feel political obligation or "sympathy." Be there for who you are, and then you will find those with whom you stand.

I know that she was and is a figure for us to rally around, but let us not forget why, how, or ourselves in these struggles that matter so much.