The Queer community often places Marsha P Johnson as a lead character in the mythos surrounding the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City- but more important than throwing the first brick or shot glass was her commitment to her community. At seventeen, Marsha was living on the streets and old enough to be a mother figure to other homeless queer youth of color called “street queens” She met Sylvia Rivera when Rivera was twelve years old and bought her a spaghetti dinner for $1.25 (Marsha was known to buy food for anyone she could. The name “Johnson” comes from the Howard Johnson chain of restaurants which street queens would often eat at without paying when they had no money for food) Together they would go on to found STAR- Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - a queer movement for those who couldn’t be saved by the respectability politics and appeasement methods of groups like Mattachine Society
