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A New Monthly Column on Sexual Diversity Issues for Asian Pacific Islander Americans

Do a Little Pride, Make a Little Love

By John Manzon-Santos

June 6 was the fifth anniversary of the passing of a community activist named Haruko Kuroiwa Brown. A nisei born and raised in Seattle, Haruko was one of 10,000 Japanese Americans sent by the U.S. government to the “relocation camp” at Minidoka, Idaho during World War II. In 1945 she moved to New York, where she raised a family, and obtained her master’s degree in social work. Haruko volunteered her energies with the Japanese American Help for the Aging, as a board member with the Japanese American Citizens League, as president of Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS, and as a powerful guest speaker on racism in U.S. history in a local alternative high school.

Haruko understood discrimination and connected the dots between various struggles that mattered deeply to her: redress for interned Japanese Americans, culturally competent services for people living with HIV disease, economic justice for immigrant Asian workers.

A heterosexual mother of two, Haruko counted many gay and lesbian people among her professional colleagues, close friends, family members and clients. She was proactive in her support of many of us who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (or LGBT for short) and, in innumerable ways, walked her walk. I mean, literally. On June 26, 1994, at age 73, Haruko joined more than a million marchers from around the world in New York City for Stonewall 25 — the first International March on the United Nations to Affirm the Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People. This historic action also commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969, the event that sparked the modern LGBT Rights movement in the U.S. For Haruko, the history of Stonewall resonated with her own life experiences.

During the last weekend of June in 1969, New York City police and Alcoholic Beverage Control Board agents entered a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Under the pretense of looking for violations of the alcohol control laws, they made their customary anti-gay comments and then, after checking identifications, expelled the patrons, one by one. Instead of quietly slipping away into the night, as they had done for years, they resisted. Someone uprooted a parking meter and used it to barricade the door. Trapped inside, the agents and police called for reinforcements, but not before completely demolishing the place. Their vehicles raced to the scene with sirens and flashing lights. The crowd grew and someone set a fire. Three days of protest ensued. And for the first time, after years of oppression, the chant, “Gay Power,” rang out. Later that summer and fall, the first five Gay Liberation Fronts formed in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, Los Angeles and New York; by the end of 1970, 300 such organizations had been created.

The first commemoration of the Stonewall Uprising was held in New York in August 1969. A year later, marches took place in New York and Los Angeles on the anniversary of the Uprising, the last weekend in June. Since then, annual marches during “Pride Month” have been organized in cities across the United States and around the world, including larger cities in Asia and the Pacific. Pride marches raise visibility, flex political muscle, and build community, while giving people permission to embrace who they are and sending a strong message that “you are not alone.” For our allies — our heterosexual family members and friends — pride marches provide opportunities for community members, like Haruko, to stand against discrimination and shame, and to express their love and support.

My first pride march was transformative. In Boston, June 1988, I addressed a crowd 75,000 strong as a representative of a local organization, the Alliance of Massachusetts Asian Lesbians and Gay Men (AMALGM), asserting the diversity of the LGBT community. From the beginning, my pride as a gay man was linked to my pride as a person of Asian descent; groups such as AMALGM created safe spaces so I did not have to choose one identity at the expense of another.

On June 24, two Sundays from now, San Francisco carries on the Stonewall tradition with this city’s 31st Annual Pride Parade. The day before, on Saturday, June 23, the Dyke March (“dyke” is a self-defining term that has been proudly reclaimed by many lesbian and bisexual women) will take place. This demonstration helps ensure that, within often male-dominated pride events, women-focused visibility and safe spaces are created. Asians and Pacific Islanders — heterosexual and LGBT — will be at both events in full force.

Do you know someone who is LGBT — a co-worker, a classmate, a neighbor? Do you have a relative whom everybody knows is gay but nobody talks about openly? An aunt who never married? A cousin who always comes alone to family gatherings? If we are willing to admit it, we all have these people in our lives, some very close and very special, others at the periphery, but nevertheless, present. The issue here is how critical it is to be aware of who is already around us. Perhaps we all feel some discomfort around people different than ourselves. But it is discomfort unexplored that breeds fear, and fear that, in the extreme, leads to intolerance.

Ever hear of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student brutally murdered in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming, because he was gay?

Ever hear of Vincent Chin, another young man in his 20s brutally murdered in 1982 in Detroit, Mich., because he was Asian?

My mother, an immigrant Filipina who was 64 years old in 1994, marched down Fifth Avenue in Stonewall 25 right alongside Haruko. She looked forward to having “a new experience” and, to my surprise, accepted my invitation to march. I extend the same invitation to you. Come out and be a part of the celebration and the commemoration, the outrage and the outrageous. Make a statement against discrimination in all its forms, and against violence and murder motivated by hate. And if you can’t make it for Pride Weekend, remember that you can be there in struggle and in spirit all year round.