15-02-2025
LGBTQ+ community remembers Stonewall protest on Valentine's Day
NEW YORK (PIX11) — On Valentine's Day, a protest at the Stonewall National Monument leads to a night of remembering the transgender community.
'This is supposed to be a day of love,' Sescily Coney, a visitor to the Stonewall National Monument, told PIX11 News. 'Having our government displace and erase individuals that is not the love we are supposed to be showing in our country,' she added.
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On this Valentine's Day night, this mother and daughter from New Jersey came to the Stonewall National Monument to pay their respects to the transgender community after the National Park Service website removed the t for trans and the q for queer from the Stonewall Monument website.
Sescily Coney's mother remembers her own mother, a dressmaker, had so many transgendered friends who were involved in the Stonewall riots back in 1969 which gave birth to the gay rights movement.
'They weren't called transgender back then but we knew what they were,' Dr. Stephanie Coney, Sescily's mother, told PIX11 News. 'I was a little girl and they wore these beautiful dresses and I can remember when Stonewall happened, they came to our house and they were all beat up.'
'It was a shock and it wasn't a shock,' Angelica Christina, board director of The Stonewall Monument's Give Back Initiative, told PIX11 News via zoom.
To Angelica Christina, this is also personal.
The 39 year-old trans Latina woman from East Harlem was homeless at the age of 18 when she says her transphobic mother threw her out.
Angelica has always been inspired by the transgender women of color who led the Stonewall rebellion in 1969.
On Friday, LGBTQ+ activists gathered at the site of the historic protests to protest.
At the National park service monument visitor center, the pictures of the trans leaders who led the stonewall uprising were still on display.
On Valentines night, FIT student Ryan Allen also wanted to support the trans community by coming to the monument.
'This is supposed to be a night about love, and that should include the transgender community,' Ryan Allen, a visitor to the Stonewall Monument to write a chalk message in support of the trans community, told PIX11 News.
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