From Stonewall to Smoketown, Queer Leaders Who Aren’t Fucking Around

“The first Pride was a riot.” This slogan went viral in June of 2020, after countless white queer Louisvillians were activated by LMPD’s murder of Breonna Taylor and the growing global uprising against police brutality. Its primary use was to agitate the ruling class Gays™️ who were critical of the Black Lives Matter protests by reminding them that there would be no Pride month, and no gay rights, were it not for Stonewall, and Black trans women destroying property and throwing bricks at cops. This Pride month, as legislators continue their assault on trans rights, more and more queer organizations, influencers, businesses, and platforms are adopting revolutionary messaging. But how many of them are actually serious about revolution?

All through March of 2023, Kentucky queers and LGBTQ+ allies took time off work to drive to the state capitol and fight a losing battle. They’d wait in line for an hour or more to pour their hearts out to disinterested politicians, then gather on the lawn or in the rotunda to listen to queer community leaders preach to the choir and cry into their megaphones. Meanwhile, representatives carried out business as usual, passing the anti-trans omnibus SB150 and then overturning Governor Beshear’s veto—just like everyone anticipated. 

If Louisville’s queer orgs are one thing, they’re consistent. Every year, like clockwork, they rally: without a strategy, without leverage, using the same tired tactics, at the total mercy of their opponent. Why do they continue this way, when nothing has changed? Not because their leaders are lazy, dumb, or incompetent. Rather, it’s because their organizations exist to reinforce the existing power structures. If they changed their tactics and dismantled those structures, they’d be out of a career.

On March 29th, while all the other protesters rallied out of earshot of the power-holders legislating trans people out of existence, a group of twenty working class queers erupted into chants inside the chambers, locking arms and refusing to be silenced while the judge and capitol staff tried helplessly to restore order. We disrupted the proceedings for twenty solid minutes, continuing to yell our chants as the Kentucky State Police pried us one at a time from our seats and arrested us.

After we were released from jail, we learned that various queer liberal organizations who had no part in the action had been reporting updates on our arrests to their platforms, and even making demands of the governor on our behalf. If you didn’t know better, you’d have thought they had organized the action. The problem was not that they were stealing our limelight, but that they were stealing our power, and using it to advance their personal and organizational interests.

Marsha P. Johnson famously said that there can be “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” Given how mutually-entrenched the nonprofit and for-profit sectors are in this stage of late capitalism, it can be tough to know which organizations are serious about winning liberation for all of us, and which ones are simply capitalizing on the posthumous fame of a Black trans femme revolutionary. Figuring this out requires understanding what power is, and how it moves. 

Power is a neutral force. It is simply the ability to act and make things happen. For a lot of us, “power” carries negative connotations. This is especially true if our only experience of power has been at the receiving end of abuses of power—by landlords, employers, corporations, the police, etc.

There are two main kinds of power: paper power (money) and people power (power in numbers). The working class has a claim on the latter. The ruling class, which includes employers, landlords, and anyone who profits off of the exploitation of workers, has a claim on the former. Queer culture in Louisville, from the media to commerce to the political sphere, is currently owned and run by the ruling class. Corporate sponsors pay for our festivals, wealthy developers fund our media outlets, and our employers pay us a fraction of the value we produce for them, which if we are lucky is just enough to feed ourselves and pay our landlords’ mortgages. 

Capitalism is propelled by the profit motive, which demands maximal profit, and therefore maximal exploitation, at any cost. Because capitalism is propelled by exploitation, extreme inequality is its logical consequence. Hence, anyone who is serious about liberation is organizing (building people power) to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a system that is not propelled by the profit motive, or by exploitation. This is all that a revolutionary is. Anyone who is serious about liberation is a revolutionary.

While most queer organizations today do not recruit or create revolutionaries, all queer organizations know that queer history is revolutionary history, and that the most important figures in queer history were revolutionaries, a.k.a. anti-capitalists. They also know that there is social capital, and profit potential, in that history. This is what bourgeois queer organizations are trying to cash in on when they quote Marsha P. Johnson, or align themselves with the Kentucky20. 

Even while co-opting revolutionary actions, symbols, and people, the ruling class attempts to forestall the revolution by construing our “activism” as a sequence of isolated spontaneous actions, as opposed to the strategic, militant, long-term project that it is. Admittedly, a Black trans woman in the 1960s throwing a brick at a cop is a breathtaking image, and fully deserving of its own holiday. But Marsha P. Johnson did a lot more than that. In fact, the bulk of her “activism” was actually organizing: developing poor and working class queers into powerful revolutionary leaders equipped to take down the system.

Together Johnson and Rivera founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a revolutionary political collective consisting of queer and trans youth, drag queens and trans women of color, and survival sex workers. STAR opened the first-ever shelter for unhoused queer and transgender youth. Their manifesto was built on socialist principles such as free healthcare, and food and social services for all people. They held regular meetings, coordinated fundraisers, and organized campaigns. Most notably of all, they recruited, trained, and invested in queer revolutionaries.

Like many Black trans women even today, Johnson and Rivera relied on survival sex work to meet their immediate needs. They hustled for food, clothing, and shelter. They were constantly thinking about how to source their next meal, what to do if one of “their kids” fell ill, and how they would protect themselves if a client became violent.

Over fifty years have passed since Stonewall, and queer and trans BIPOC are still burdened with material insecurity, struggling daily to meet their immediate needs, and relying on sex work and other high-risk work for their survival. This glaring lack of progress is indicative of powerless leadership: leadership that’s not organizing to win. Looking at our local queer orgs’ campaigns and demands lists (or lack thereof), it’s no wonder why SB150 passed in Kentucky, and why so few of us can break out of survival mode. Visibility, representation, and public education are all important, but what are these orgs doing about Louisville’s affordable housing crisis? That’s what Black queer scholar and tenant organizer, Jessica Bellamy, wants to know.

In 2019, Bellamy (any/all) co-founded the Root Cause Research Center, a community platform and base for subversive scholarship that works to eliminate social problems such as poverty and houselessness by attacking their root cause: racial capitalism. In the simplest terms, subversive scholarship is an organizing tool. When Bellamy and their partner Josh Poe aren’t organizing, they’re providing scientific data to steer that work – in real time. The first time I encountered subversive scholarship was in 2020, on RCRC’s website, and my mind was blown. And then I read Bellamy’s story.

Bellamy grew up in the Smoketown neighborhood in a small shotgun-style house. They describe the early years of their childhood as being rich with family and community. When they were six years old, Bellamy’s father was murdered, and their family made the painful decision to leave Smoketown by the time she was eight. Bellamy now owns the house they grew up in, but is still unable to live there due to classist and racist lending barriers, rising property taxes, and the skyrocketing costs of construction. 

Like countless queer and Black Louisvillians, Bellamy is a victim of gentrification: a process whereby wealthy developers use public resources and taxpayer dollars to buy up properties in poor and working class neighborhoods, driving up the cost of living, and ultimately pricing residents out of their homes. But like her queer predecessors, Johnson and Rivera, Bellamy is fighting back, and she is fighting to win.

Bellamy is one of the authors of the Historically Black Neighborhood Ordinance: Louisville’s first anti-displacement policy, and the first anti-displacement policy in the South. When it passes, the Ordinance will do three things: 1) prevent the city from giving away public resources to development projects that would increase the cost of living in HBNs; 2) ensure that HBN residents get priority access to city programs (like the Downpayment Assistance program, the Home Repair program, and the Small Business assistance program); and 3) create a pathway to restore land that was wrongfully taken from families by the government. 

Sponsored by Councilmen Jecorey Arthur and Kumar Rashad, the HBN Ordinance has gained significant support in all 26 of Louisville’s voting districts. Over 1,000 Louisvillians and nearly 50 local organizations have signed a petition in support of the Ordinance.

A petition isn’t just an organizing tool: it’s also a litmus test. A petition tells you where someone’s loyalties lie, and whose self interests they’re aligned with. Orgs that are serious about liberation for all—including workers, poor people, trans folks, BIPOC, and those who exist at the intersection of these identities, won’t just sign the petition: they’ll use their power, connections, and resources to make sure that it passes.

Has your favorite queer or “progressive” nonprofit signed in coalition with the HBN Ordinance? What else are they doing to combat gentrification, displacement, the affordable housing shortage, racist and classist lending practices, and the houselessness impacting so many in our community? Are you willing to make a phone call, or send an email, and find out? Feel free to use the template below. If they say they haven’t signed, ask them why, and lean into the tension. Remember: it’s their job to serve your interests, and you don’t need paper power to hold them accountable.