Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, 1970

An historic tape was found. This week features a remarkable 1970 recording of Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and other members of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), made by 20-year-old WBAI reporter Liza Cowan. Rediscovered nearly 50 years later by Making Gay History in the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the tape captures Rivera and Johnson speaking candidly about their lives, gender expression, discrimination, sexuality, and activism, as well as their efforts to create community and support for street youth through STAR House. This is what is believed to be the earliest known recording of Rivera and Johnson and offering an extraordinary first-person glimpse of two pioneering trans activists at the beginning of their political lives. In the news this week, a new report finds LGBTQ+ people make up more than 12 percent of the U.S. population, while a federal judge again strikes down Texas’s drag ban. LGBTQ+ asylum seekers face heightened danger amid a migration crisis in Spain’s Ceuta, and South African activists mobilize against an anti-LGBTQ+ “family values” conference. And in Ireland, Cork opens the country’s first permanent LGBTQ+ museum exhibition, featuring a historic Rainbow Flag from San Francisco.

Featured speakers: Brigitte Bandit, LGBT choir Choral Con Fusion, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Victor.

Credits: Associate Producer/Host Lucia Chappelle, Producer Brian DeShazor, News writer Jeb Backe, the feature was produced by Brian DeShazor with assistance from Making Gay History and the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

NewsWrap reporters Ava Davis and John Dyer 5th music: the Brotherhood of Man

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