Sylvia Rivera, born on July 2 in 1951, was a Latina American queer rights activist, member of the Gay Liberation Front, and community worker from the state of New York.

Rivera, who identified as a “half-sister”, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With her close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a socialist group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.

At different times in her life, Rivera battled substance abuse and lived on the streets, largely in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, mainstream society and the assimilationist factions of the LGBT community were leaving behind.

Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19th, 2002, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins said this of her: “In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall”.

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  • Goadstool [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    18 days ago

    Circadian rhythm is made up (or at least not nearly as uniform as it is implied to be) in order to make people more willing to conform to a “regular work schedule” and you cannot change my mind

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      18 days ago

      100% agree it’s bullshit.

      “What do you mean you can’t wake up every day at 5am, eat wash and dress and get to a job by 6, and then spend all day until the sun goes down performing the same meaningless task at a high rate of speed and precision? Something must be wrong with you!”