You can tear pages out of textbooks, scrub websites, and pass laws banning uncomfortable truths, but history doesn’t disappear just because the powerful find it inconvenient. The fight for rights—Black, queer, immigrant, labor—has always been met with erasure attempts, and yet, those stories endure. The people who lived them remember. The people they inspired carry them forward. Trump can try to rewrite the past, but he’ll fail—because history isn’t his to erase.
I love all of your newsletters, but this one is so important. Thank goodness for your eyewitness testimony in this moment when the trumpet administration is trying to erase transgender people from their own history!
Way to go Luc. The Trump Admin. is evil incarnate. Just read in the NY Times that J.D. Vance is trying to get the Germans to include all the Super Right Groups in the elections. Including the Nazis. I don't know, man, didn't we defeat those creeps in the 40's, Didn't they put millions of people in Death Camps? Why should they get to vote? Keep thumping them. Great job.
Great piece. Of course, in 47's Ministry of Truth (whatever it's named), history and words can simply be erased, or changed. Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, Mt. Denali to Mt. McKinley are the most notable recent examples, but there will be thousands of others. We are actually living "Back to the Future," back to "1984," as created by George Orwell in his 1949 novel. Anyone care to argue with those four famous lines from the book (extremely rhetorical question): "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Then: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." And: "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Finally: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."
An unspoken horror a lot of us share is that while we know that for a fact, we fear we won't live long enough to enjoy again the experience of normality.
Your point well taken. I was focused on dystopia. T***p has compared himself to William McKinley, which moves us back to the last 25 years of the 19th Century, "Gilded Age" for industrialists, gelded age for workers, and you can add Jim Crow to the poison in the country's political bloodstream.
I suspect that Trump will try to erase and rewrite any history that hurts his feelings. Needless to say, he can't erase memories or undo reality. One day, he and his stupid movement will crumble and he will take his true place in history as one of the biggest mistakes the US ever made. Progress always takes time and is often painful, but humanity is moving forward. Frightened small-minded men never learn. And to be honest, my resistance has already helped many of us grow a bit stronger.
That's going to be hard, pretty much all history that fails the feature the Fragile Felon hurts his feelings. History will be limited to the Kash Patel fantasy series praising the Orange King. He and Maga have long been undoing reality, we're in the post-truth era already.
Like the Fragile Felon part, and I have a pretty large confidence in the ability of small d democratic Americans to reengage with what we need to and ought to be, and that may be socialism folks.
This is an excellent reminder of the battle ahead of us. I just spent a week in Florida with a dear friend who has no love for Donnie Darko et al. As a matter of fact, one of our days was spent at the Harry Chapin food bank. Then from the sublime to the ridiculous, we went to “the tennis club” to meet her friends (wealth preserver Trumplethinskins.) With the feeble excuse of “that’s just Trump being Trump. He doesn’t mean it” I nearly jumped out of my seat. There is obviously no idea of what the 47 administration does multiple times a day. I returned home yesterday and immediately took a second shower to get Florida off of me. Fortunately my friend is north by May. We will only see one another above the Maginot line from now on. (That being the Tappan Zee Bridge!)
I’m in tears reading this. 1969 was the year my now late daughter was born. It wasn’t until 1976 as a newly divorced shy female I met a friend in my apartment complex in North Plainfield NJ. We went to the village one hot summer night because he said the Kiwi fruit was in season. During that visit he said he had to go into a bar on Christopher St for a while and I couldn’t come in. An hour later while I waited outside on Christopher St he came out and we took the bus home to North Plainfield. He became my best friend! He was my first gay friend in my life.
I’m so angry at Trump for what he’s doing.
We are all human beings with 46 chromosomes. But we’re more than what those chromosomes dictate in my Biology and genetics courses I took to get my MS in Biology.
Obviously, your article cut deep with me! What is this country coming to! We need to fight this. What’s next…ovens! And you get what I mean!
I was there both nights. On the night of the riots. I had been in the Stonewall. But I was too shy to talk to anyone (I was just barely coming out.) I left there and went to a bar named Danny's. At the corner of Christopher and Hudson. There was no one there. So I had one beer and decided to go back to the Stonewall and take my chances. By the time I got back, all hell had broken out, which couldn't have been much more than a half-hour later. I spent most of the night on a tree limb in the park across the street or hanging from the fence surrounding the park. That night was essentially my first exposure to gay humor, especially drag queen humor. Although it was a very serious event, the emasculating catcalls to the police were right on point. The picture you show I suspect was taken The 2nd night because I don't remember being able to get that close to the Inn on the first night. It seemed that summer, everywhere I went, Raids were happening. The Shore House in Bayville, New York (near where I grew up) was also raided. I was one of the lucky few whose name was not published in the local paper. On another matter that may be of interest to you before my retirement, I was the legal liaison for the office at Treasury that controlled access to the disbursing systems. I suppose I might've been the point person early on, but it certainly would have been pushed up the ladder rapidly. I can't say how much I admire Dave Lybryck for his stance (I only remember him from the very early stages of his career). Also, probably not of interest, but you and I are extremely distant relatives, but then again, families that have been around for a couple of hundred years are probably all related through not too many degrees of separation.
Photo taken on Saturday night. I got that crowd together for Fred and got them to stand where Fred could get the Stonewall sign on the background. It was one of only a few photos Fred took that night. Once he got his shot, he left. He told me he had tickets to an off Broadway play and didn't want them to go to waste. Ahhh, the 60s, and ahhh, Fred McDarrah.
A touching remembrance, Jerry. Your lungs must have been messed up after those two nights in the streets. Going down the few steps into the Lion's Head Saturday night was the only time I was ever teargassed. I wasn't tempted to linger outdoors. I won't pretend that I understood the importance of what was happening. My office was partly upstairs. That was my neighborhood. That was the noisy bridge & tunnel crowd that was in the streets every night. It was a era of riots all around me, mob and police. Around that time, a writer we knew was involved in the real-life Dog Day Afternoon. As neighbors and I gawked into a smoking pit that had been a brownstone a couple blocks east of Stonewall, cops suddenly moved us out after discovering that a bomb, not a gas leak, had caused the blast. Stonewall Saturday night? Business as usual.
That was Arthur Bell who covered the gay scene for the Voice. One of the bank robbers demanded to talk to him because he was the only out of the closet reporter in NY. The cos called Mary Nichols and Mary called Arthur. I was in the office on the 4th floor when he left to go to Brooklyn to the bank. I loaned him the cab fare to get there. Get this: I didn't go along because it was Arthur's story!
Great retelling. I have a gay cousin, great-nephew and his gender-neutral sibling. I have a friend with a non-binary adult person. What Trump is doing is dangerous and needs to be stopped. We might not have another election in this country if this keeps up. It's all slipping away.
Again, thank you for your beautiful writing about important issues. As an artist whose era mirrors yours I have always had many friends who were LGBTQ+. My life was made so much richer for these friendships. One of my oldest friends was teaching music in Enid OK and was outed and fired from his job. He fled to the Bay Area. We are in dangerous times. We will stand strong.
You can tear pages out of textbooks, scrub websites, and pass laws banning uncomfortable truths, but history doesn’t disappear just because the powerful find it inconvenient. The fight for rights—Black, queer, immigrant, labor—has always been met with erasure attempts, and yet, those stories endure. The people who lived them remember. The people they inspired carry them forward. Trump can try to rewrite the past, but he’ll fail—because history isn’t his to erase.
Beautifully stated.
You’ve said a mouthful there.
Fluggin-A! Straight up Truth!
I love all of your newsletters, but this one is so important. Thank goodness for your eyewitness testimony in this moment when the trumpet administration is trying to erase transgender people from their own history!
That's the word: IMPORTANT. Thank You, Ellen, and Lucian. Sharing this newsletter, with that heading.
Way to go Luc. The Trump Admin. is evil incarnate. Just read in the NY Times that J.D. Vance is trying to get the Germans to include all the Super Right Groups in the elections. Including the Nazis. I don't know, man, didn't we defeat those creeps in the 40's, Didn't they put millions of people in Death Camps? Why should they get to vote? Keep thumping them. Great job.
Thanks old pal.
Great piece. Of course, in 47's Ministry of Truth (whatever it's named), history and words can simply be erased, or changed. Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, Mt. Denali to Mt. McKinley are the most notable recent examples, but there will be thousands of others. We are actually living "Back to the Future," back to "1984," as created by George Orwell in his 1949 novel. Anyone care to argue with those four famous lines from the book (extremely rhetorical question): "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Then: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." And: "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Finally: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."
Looking forward to the day when we can Memory Hole the Orange Felon and all his cowardly cult. What pointless cruelty they've all unleashed.
An unspoken horror a lot of us share is that while we know that for a fact, we fear we won't live long enough to enjoy again the experience of normality.
May that day come soon!
More like back to 1850…
Your point well taken. I was focused on dystopia. T***p has compared himself to William McKinley, which moves us back to the last 25 years of the 19th Century, "Gilded Age" for industrialists, gelded age for workers, and you can add Jim Crow to the poison in the country's political bloodstream.
I suspect that Trump will try to erase and rewrite any history that hurts his feelings. Needless to say, he can't erase memories or undo reality. One day, he and his stupid movement will crumble and he will take his true place in history as one of the biggest mistakes the US ever made. Progress always takes time and is often painful, but humanity is moving forward. Frightened small-minded men never learn. And to be honest, my resistance has already helped many of us grow a bit stronger.
That's going to be hard, pretty much all history that fails the feature the Fragile Felon hurts his feelings. History will be limited to the Kash Patel fantasy series praising the Orange King. He and Maga have long been undoing reality, we're in the post-truth era already.
Like the Fragile Felon part, and I have a pretty large confidence in the ability of small d democratic Americans to reengage with what we need to and ought to be, and that may be socialism folks.
You rock, Lucian! Thank you for this celebration of human beings!!!
This is an excellent reminder of the battle ahead of us. I just spent a week in Florida with a dear friend who has no love for Donnie Darko et al. As a matter of fact, one of our days was spent at the Harry Chapin food bank. Then from the sublime to the ridiculous, we went to “the tennis club” to meet her friends (wealth preserver Trumplethinskins.) With the feeble excuse of “that’s just Trump being Trump. He doesn’t mean it” I nearly jumped out of my seat. There is obviously no idea of what the 47 administration does multiple times a day. I returned home yesterday and immediately took a second shower to get Florida off of me. Fortunately my friend is north by May. We will only see one another above the Maginot line from now on. (That being the Tappan Zee Bridge!)
I used to go to Fla. on a winter golf trip. Not happening now.
Yes, thank you! Each post, without exception, carries its own strong message, set in the context of history. "Lest we forget".
Never forget!
I’m in tears reading this. 1969 was the year my now late daughter was born. It wasn’t until 1976 as a newly divorced shy female I met a friend in my apartment complex in North Plainfield NJ. We went to the village one hot summer night because he said the Kiwi fruit was in season. During that visit he said he had to go into a bar on Christopher St for a while and I couldn’t come in. An hour later while I waited outside on Christopher St he came out and we took the bus home to North Plainfield. He became my best friend! He was my first gay friend in my life.
I’m so angry at Trump for what he’s doing.
We are all human beings with 46 chromosomes. But we’re more than what those chromosomes dictate in my Biology and genetics courses I took to get my MS in Biology.
Obviously, your article cut deep with me! What is this country coming to! We need to fight this. What’s next…ovens! And you get what I mean!
You have my heart, Doris.
How shameful. History cannot be erased or torn down. And that will apply to Trump's reign as thee worst president in the history of the country.
Yes!!!!!
I was there both nights. On the night of the riots. I had been in the Stonewall. But I was too shy to talk to anyone (I was just barely coming out.) I left there and went to a bar named Danny's. At the corner of Christopher and Hudson. There was no one there. So I had one beer and decided to go back to the Stonewall and take my chances. By the time I got back, all hell had broken out, which couldn't have been much more than a half-hour later. I spent most of the night on a tree limb in the park across the street or hanging from the fence surrounding the park. That night was essentially my first exposure to gay humor, especially drag queen humor. Although it was a very serious event, the emasculating catcalls to the police were right on point. The picture you show I suspect was taken The 2nd night because I don't remember being able to get that close to the Inn on the first night. It seemed that summer, everywhere I went, Raids were happening. The Shore House in Bayville, New York (near where I grew up) was also raided. I was one of the lucky few whose name was not published in the local paper. On another matter that may be of interest to you before my retirement, I was the legal liaison for the office at Treasury that controlled access to the disbursing systems. I suppose I might've been the point person early on, but it certainly would have been pushed up the ladder rapidly. I can't say how much I admire Dave Lybryck for his stance (I only remember him from the very early stages of his career). Also, probably not of interest, but you and I are extremely distant relatives, but then again, families that have been around for a couple of hundred years are probably all related through not too many degrees of separation.
Photo taken on Saturday night. I got that crowd together for Fred and got them to stand where Fred could get the Stonewall sign on the background. It was one of only a few photos Fred took that night. Once he got his shot, he left. He told me he had tickets to an off Broadway play and didn't want them to go to waste. Ahhh, the 60s, and ahhh, Fred McDarrah.
A touching remembrance, Jerry. Your lungs must have been messed up after those two nights in the streets. Going down the few steps into the Lion's Head Saturday night was the only time I was ever teargassed. I wasn't tempted to linger outdoors. I won't pretend that I understood the importance of what was happening. My office was partly upstairs. That was my neighborhood. That was the noisy bridge & tunnel crowd that was in the streets every night. It was a era of riots all around me, mob and police. Around that time, a writer we knew was involved in the real-life Dog Day Afternoon. As neighbors and I gawked into a smoking pit that had been a brownstone a couple blocks east of Stonewall, cops suddenly moved us out after discovering that a bomb, not a gas leak, had caused the blast. Stonewall Saturday night? Business as usual.
That was Arthur Bell who covered the gay scene for the Voice. One of the bank robbers demanded to talk to him because he was the only out of the closet reporter in NY. The cos called Mary Nichols and Mary called Arthur. I was in the office on the 4th floor when he left to go to Brooklyn to the bank. I loaned him the cab fare to get there. Get this: I didn't go along because it was Arthur's story!
History cannot be erased because there are living witnesses like you who loudly speak the truth.
Wonderful to be remembered. Thank you.
That is wonderful to know, Lucian. Thank you for the full story behind this episode in our history.
Great retelling. I have a gay cousin, great-nephew and his gender-neutral sibling. I have a friend with a non-binary adult person. What Trump is doing is dangerous and needs to be stopped. We might not have another election in this country if this keeps up. It's all slipping away.
Again, thank you for your beautiful writing about important issues. As an artist whose era mirrors yours I have always had many friends who were LGBTQ+. My life was made so much richer for these friendships. One of my oldest friends was teaching music in Enid OK and was outed and fired from his job. He fled to the Bay Area. We are in dangerous times. We will stand strong.