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Colin Ashley, a Reclaim Pride organizer, said the Queer Liberation March is a protest of the over-policing of NYC Pride and “the selling off of pride to over 150 corporate floats.” Ellen Shumsky, a veteran Gay Liberation Front member, speaks on behalf of the Queer Liberation March in Sheridan Square, New York City on May 14, 2019. Richard Shpuntoff, phone call with Amanda Davis/NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, July 17, 2018.The alternative march is the result of years of tension between members of the Reclaim Pride Coalition and Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that produces the official NYC Pride event. Richard Shpuntoff, Julio of Jackson Heights, documentary, 2016. Matt Foreman, e-mail to Ken Lustbander/NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, September 10, 2018. Luis Gallo, “Julio Rivera and the Making of a Hate Crime,” Latino USA, June 24, 2016. Fried, “2 Accomplices Guilty of Murder in ‘Gay Bashing’ Case in Queens,” The New York Times, November 21, 1991. Jeremiah Moss, “Julio of Jackson Heights,” Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, March 18, 2011. īill Parry, “Julio Rivera’s 1990 Murder to Be Remembered in Jackson Heights,” Gay City News, June 30, 2015.ĭavid Gonzalez, “At Site of Gay Man’s Murder, a Street Corner Acknowledges Its Past,” The New York Times, March 20, 2016.Įric Pooley, “With Extreme Prejudice: A Murder in Queens Exposes the Frightening Rise of Gay-Bashing,” New York Magazine, April 8, 1991, pp. In 1993, the Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee established the Queens Pride Parade, with a route that includes what is now known as Julio Rivera Corner.Īndy Humm, “Tears for Julio Rivera 25 Years After his Murder,” Gay City News, July 9, 2015. Rivera’s sister-in-law, Peg Rivera, became a tireless advocate for LGBT issues and was the first ally elected to AVP’s board of directors. Sedarbaum, co-founder of Q-GLU, worked with AVP to develop a training program for the 115th Police Precinct to help improve the relationship between the police and the LGBT community. Reaction to his death also led to the formation of several important organizations, some of which include Queens Gays and Lesbians United (Q-GLU), the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens, and Queens Pride House. Additional advocacy efforts, such as two separate demonstrations in October 1990 to pressure Mayor David Dinkins into publicly acknowledging the murder, ultimately made Rivera’s case the first gay hate crime to be tried in New York State. It also marked the first time since 1969 that the gay community took a stand against homophobic hate crimes in Queens, which had included the deaths of at least six people and numerous gay bashings over several decades, and demanded that law enforcement finally address gay bias attacks (the police, for example, initially labeled Rivera’s murder as drug-related and assigned the case to an out-of-town detective). On August 18, 1990, six weeks after Rivera’s murder, his friends and family, members of the Latino (largely Puerto Rican) community, AVP, the Julio Rivera Anti-Violence Coalition, and Queer Nation, which brought hundreds of LGBT New Yorkers, participated in a silent candlelight vigil in Jackson Heights.Ĭonsidered the first gay public demonstration in Queens since a 1969 event in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the vigil was significant in expanding LGBT activism beyond Manhattan and connecting activists in both boroughs. Planning for the vigil largely took place in the basement of the Magic Touch. Ed Sedarbaum, a gay rights activist and social worker from Jackson Heights, became highly involved after attending this meeting.
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Working with AVP’s then-executive director Matt Foreman, Sack later attended a Queer Nation meeting at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan and gave an impassioned plea for help in organizing a vigil.
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Tommy Grimaldi, owner of the Magic Touch, a popular Jackson Heights gay bar, and Alan Sack, Rivera’s friend and former lover – and one of the people to find him dying on the sidewalk – contacted the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (now the NYC Anti-Violence Project AVP) the morning after Rivera died.