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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Remember the radicalism of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson
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“Our armies are rising:” Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson
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Big shout out to the woman who helped me pick up my groceries when I went I for just cat food, realized I needed or wanted a lot of other stuff and had a silly arm full. Also I now have a huge crush on this person I've never seen before or probably again. I present fairly male and she just did some gender swap chivalry and swoon. I started to crouch down to get them and she opened with "get back up, I'll get those for you" and then very nicely helped with my groceries and assembled them on me to be more easy to carry. I'm capable of being very gracious in accepting a favor and medium st flirting and if this was her doing it, she floored me way too hard to do anything, if she wasn't it was aggressively nice and very hot.