#mattachinesociety

Please read the story and see the illustration in context here: https://magazine.atavist.com/ordinary-person-wild-radical-mattachine-society-lgbt

#MartyRobinson (pictured center) was an organizer for gay-rights causes for 27 years who died of AIDS on March 19, 199 in Brooklyn aged 49. Commission on #AIDS in 1987. Born in Brooklyn, he attended #NewYorkUniversity. He worked as a union carpenter specializing in residential remodeling. Robinson was present at when the police raided the #StonewallInn #GreenwichVillage in 1969. Such raids were common, but for the first time the customers resisted and fought back. Afterward, a rally in #SheridanSquare drew 2,000 sympathizers. Robinson, who had been active in the #MattachineSociety was a lead speaker. The #Stonewallriot became a symbol that galvanized many gay men and women and started a new era of activism. At the forefront, Robinson co-founded the #GayActivistAlliance and the #LavenderHillMob. He was also active in the #GayLiberationFront and was a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or #ActUp. He helped develop "zaps," inventive and confrontational protests, such as infiltrating someone else's event, grabbing the microphone and upstaging the proceedings. Mayor John V. Lindsay was interrupted at a ceremony marking the #MetropolitanMuseumofArt's 100th anniversary, in an effort to prod him into stronger support for gay rights legislation. Such tactics often caused resentment but also got attention and sometimes won access. Pressure on #DickCavett persuaded him to give Robinson the platform of an appearance on national television. Sometimes he resorted to more conventional methods, like testifying before the Presidential Commission on AIDS in 1987. Photo credit Jon Nalley #whatisrememberedlives #theaidsmemorial #aidsmemorial #neverforget #endaids #lgbthistory

Mattachine Society founding members, Christmas 1951 (l to r: Konrad Stevens, Harry Hay, Dale Jennings, Rudi Gernreich, Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Paul Bernard). Photo by James Gruber. When they met in July 1950, Harry Hay gave Rudi Gernreich a copy of “The Call,” Hay's five-page proposal calling for the creation of an organization of “the androgynes of the world.” Gernreich called the plan to organize homosexuals “the most dangerous thing I’ve ever read” and, he added, “I’m with you one hundred percent.” From there, the two men attempted to find fellow travelers by distributing copies of “The Call” on a gay beach; the effort failed. Ultimately, Hay approached Bob Hull and Hull’s former lover, Chuck Rowland, with the idea; Hull, in turn, told Dale Jennings of the plan. On November 11, 1950, sixty-six years ago today, Hay, Gernreich, Hull, Rowland, and Jennings gathered at Hay’s home in Silver Lake and formed “The Society of Fools,” which eventually became known as The Mattachine Society (in honor of the medieval performers whose role it was to speak truth to power). The establishment of Mattachine represents a fundamental turning point in queer history; over the next two decades, Mattachine and its progeny—along with the Daughters of Bilitis—created the infrastructure on which the post-Stonewall gay liberation movement was built. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #MattachineSociety (at Silver Lake, Los Angeles)