Our friends from i-D head to New York’s Sage Centre, an accessible and inclusive space for LGBT+ elders to celebrate their grassroots activism 50 years on from the Stonewall riots.
New York City, 1969. Being gay is considered a psychological disorder. Soliciting homosexual acts is a criminal offence, as is dressing in less than three elements of ‘gender appropriate’ clothing. Numerous police raids shut down underground gay bars and other LGBT+ spaces, provoking the unheard, unsettled and misrepresented community to take action. On the night of a raid on Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn, a landmark violent protest takes place, changing the course of culture in the following decades.
Fifty years later, the circumstances for NYC’s LGBT+ culture have changed exponentially. i-D celebrates the freedom given to today’s young LGBT+ population as a result of the previous generations’ fight and speaks to eyewitnesses from the riot and members of the elderly LGBT+ community at New York’s Sage Centre.
Host of the film Louis Bubko also finds out how far rights for the community have evolved over the half century.
