Silvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) was most known for helping to incite the 1969 Stonewall riots. Rivera was a Puerto Rican-American gay and transgender rights activist and icon. Bullied for her gender expression as a child, she ran away from home at 11 years old and survived the streets of New York through sex exploitation. Rivera identified as a drag queen, and spent much of her activism fighting for the inclusion of those like her, drag-queens and transgender people, within the gay rights movement. Rivera was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, and later co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with close friend Marsha P. Johnson, which specifically worked to help homeless transgender youth. Notably, STAR fought for both the New York City Transgender Rights Bill and for a trans-inclusive New York State Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, credit, and the exercise of civil rights.”