Sylvia Rivera, born on July 2 in 1951, was a Latina American queer rights activist, member of the Gay Liberation Front, and community worker from the state of New York.
Rivera, who identified as a "half-sister", participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With her close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a socialist group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.
At different times in her life, Rivera battled substance abuse and lived on the streets, largely in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, mainstream society and the assimilationist factions of the LGBT community were leaving behind.
Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19th, 2002, at St. Vincent's Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins said this of her: "In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall".
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Remember the radicalism of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson
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“Our armies are rising:” Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson
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I'm happy to be wrong about it, and I'm certainly not trying to put gender constructs on people who feel the way you do, but I still think in the absence of other information it isn't an unreasonable conclusion to jump to. If you're wrong about it then it hasn't harmed anyone anyway. I'm most of all hurt that they would think I meant it that way. I've known these people for years.