Uncover - S3 Bonus: The Village at Stonewall (World Pride New York)

Episode Date: June 26, 2019

Join host Justin Ling and a panel of special guests in front of a live audience at the Human Rights Conference as part of World Pride in New York City marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Panelists from around the world reflect on the movement since Stonewall and what's next for LGBTQ+ rights today.

When was the last time you said, hmm, I never thought about it that way? The Current aims to give you that moment every single day. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and our award-winning team brings you stories and conversations to expand your worldview. Sometimes they connect to the news of the day, sometimes to the issues of our time. And you'll hear all kinds of people on The Current, from best-selling authors to the Prime Minister to maybe your neighbor. Find us wherever you get your podcasts now, including YouTube. I'll talk to you soon.

This is a CBC Podcast. Good afternoon. My name is Justin Ling. I am the host of the Uncover the Village podcast for the CBC, and we are here in New York City at the World Human Rights Conference in front of a live audience. That's you folks. The podcast we produce takes a deep dive look into the murders of eight gay men in Toronto by serial killer Bruce MacArthur. And we look at murders going back decades, many of which have remained unsolved.

But what we also tried to do with this podcast was to show some of these bigger questions. What happened in these cases and what did that tell us about policing, about society at large? What were the social forces that allowed this to happen? And we looked at the point where the queer community in Canada stood up and said, enough. Now we're here for a pretty auspicious occasion. It is World Pride, and it's the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which ignited the queer rights movement. It's the 50th anniversary of the day that police raided the Stonewall Inn and forced people out into the streets. Now we're going to talk a bit about Stonewall and about the legacy of those riots, but first, we're going to go international.

Earlier this month, Botswana decriminalized homosexuality, Brazil legislated homophobia as a crime, and Ecuador and Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage. But while there's been progress, it can often feel like we've taken two steps forward and one step back. My next two guests know that situation all too well. Jessica Stern is the Executive Director of Outright Action International, which advocates for LGBTQ rights abroad. And to my left is Prince Mavendra Gohil. He is the first openly gay prince in India and founder of the Lakshya Trust, a charity advocating for the LGBTQ

community in the Indian state of Gujarat. Thanks for joining me. So I want to start, you know, it is the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. You two are both here in New York City. What's on your mind this Pride? So I have come to celebrate this moment with America because just last year, as we all know, we have won a landmark judgment in India, which I had, honestly speaking, not expected it would happen in my lifetime. I think this is a victory over bigotry, victory over hypocrisy, and victory for human rights. Tell us a little bit more about what the decision actually said. So there are a lot of misconceptions about this law, which people think was targeting only the homosexual population.

But the truth is that this law was targeting the entire country. It was not a law only for the homosexual relations, but it was about heterosexuality as well, because this law says that any kind of sexual intercourse, which is penetrative in nature, but doesn't result in procreation, is illegal, which means that even a married man and a woman, if they are indulging in sex, then they can have sex only if they produce a baby, which is a total violation of a human right. I mean, we have right to have sex without producing a baby.

You cannot penalize, you cannot imprison somebody with 10 years imprisonment and fine for having sex without producing a baby. So it was a basic human right issue of every individual. But of course, it was the LGBT community which was victimized for this. That's the reason we had to knock the doors of the court to seek justice and to say that, please recognize us. We are existing. We need our rights to be given to us.

Jessica, over the last year, have we seen major successes? Like I said, two steps forward, one step back. I feel like we've seen some of those cases internationally, but we've also seen cases of new laws targeting queer people. That is such a hard question to answer. Let's start with the positive. What were the good things that happened in the past year? There are a lot of things that we should be celebrating over the past year. And I think that we should lead with that because Pride is both about protest and demanding our rights, but it's also

about recognizing how far we've come. So I was just jotting down some of the countries that I've been watching over the past year and really celebrating. And we talked about India, we talked about Taiwan, we talked about Botswana, we talked about Ecuador. I mean, countries that don't have a long history of LGBTIQ legal recognition have taken huge steps forward. Actually, as I was on my way to this conference, I was on the phone with a former government official from Angola. Angola is the first country in the entire world, in world history, to reform its penal code and on the one hand, heroically decriminalize homosexuality, which in and of itself is something to be celebrated, and on the other hand, to bring about

the penalization of homophobia in the workplace. It's completely amazing. And this is not from one of the usual suspect countries. So we're definitely seeing progress and we're seeing progress in unlikely places. Okay, so give me the bad news. Well, you know, I'm an activist. So I always like sort of balance between saying we can change the world and we must change the world because we're living with crisis. And I do really want to emphasize the amount of work that we have to do. You know, we're sitting in New York City. We have the luxury of sitting in a law school right now. We can walk into this building without fear of arrest. And we can walk out of this building without fear that journalists are going to photograph us and we're going to end up in the paper tomorrow outed for who we are and what we care about. I was thinking a little bit about Turkey when I was on my way here. In Turkey,

city after city has banned pride festivals. So when you march on Sunday and when you celebrate pride this week, when you think to yourself, oh my God, there are too many activities that are LGBTIQ related this week, just think about all of our friends around the world who don't have that luxury, who actually are taking their lives into their hands for honoring pride. So obviously a lot of change can't happen until people come out of the closet. This has been our experience in North America for sure. Prince Mavendra, tell me about coming out for you. You know, it wasn't just coming out in a country that still had anti-homosexuality or anti-sodomy laws in the books, but you came in in a royal family where that wasn't necessarily accepted and certainly hadn't been done before.

I mean, it's hard enough coming out as a queer kid in Canada. I can only imagine it. There's a lot more hills to climb for you. What was that like? So I have been working for the LGBT community for the past several years before even I made this decision. and I wasn't happy with the way the mindset of the society is in spite of the fact that our country has such a rich cultural heritage on homosexuality existing and we have the evidence of that existing in our Kama Sutra and several temples and texts written in India. But at the same time, everything is hushed up and not spoken about and taboo. There's no education. There's no sex education in our education system. So this hypocrisy which was prevailing, this bigotry which was prevailing in our society

actually forced me to take this plunge because I wanted people to talk because we were all silent. We were not even allowed to say the word gay. So I wanted these kind of words to be spoken in the day-to-day language and mainstream. My whole purpose was that I need to break the stereotypes. I need people to talk and to kind of mainstream our issues, whether it's in the film industry, whether it's in people's homes, it's in education, it's in government, it's in Parliament. So that was the whole idea and that's why I took this decision.

What was the reaction like? It was a kind of an earthquake which happened and which the shockwaves reached right up to Oprah Winfrey in Chicago. So you can imagine that it had a great impact. But that was the idea. I wanted that it should create a controversy. My own life was at stake. I was threatened to be killed. My effigies were burnt.

I was stripped of my title. I was excommunicated, disowned, disinherited. So just practically going against the current. But I knew within myself that I haven't done anything wrong I'm true to myself and I'm true and honest to others and the good thing in India though again that's a misconception which a lot of people around the world think that it is illegal to be gay in India which was never the case it was never illegal to

be gay in India in fact as I was telling you, even the Homosexual Act was illegal, but so was Heterosexual Act, you know. So what is the big deal about, you know? I mean, even heterosexuals were guilty. So that understanding was there with me. I knew the facts of the law. So that encouraged me to move ahead. Jessica, over the last couple of years, we've seen this shift kind of away from, you know, this liberal push throughout the world to this much more illiberal politics, you know, populism, nationalism. Has it become harder for us to advance the cause of LGBTQ people around the world when we have someone like Viktor Orban in Europe, when we have Erdogan in Turkey? Has it

become harder because in our own backyard, things seem to be getting worse for queer people? Absolutely. I don't think this is business as usual. I don't think we should read the news every day and read about the rise of right-wing dictatorships and the erosion of human rights and the rule of law and think, this is just a bad news day. I think we should actually acknowledge that there is a dramatic shift happening in democracies around the world. And in fact, the notion of democracy is not something we can take for granted. Imperfect though they have been, inequitable though they have been. And within that context of a rise of populism, ethno-nationalism, white supremacy, reinvigorated racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia,

LGBTIQ people are also more vulnerable. So where outright works, which is, you know, broadly in 193 countries globally, we are receiving more urgent pleas for help from LGBTIQ people everywhere. And sometimes it looks like someone attacked me on the street. And sometimes it looks like our LGBTIQ organization has been shut down. You know, in Guangzhou, China, two LGBTIQ organizations were shut down in January. That didn't make global news. And some of that had to do with the tactics used by local Chinese activists. And some of it had to do with the fact that it's actually nearly impossible to keep up with all of the places where LGBTIQ rights are being eroded.

And so I do think it matters enormously. I think it matters when formerly friendly or allied governments like Brazil, like the U.S., are no longer a source for anything good and actually have become a part of the problem. And I think, you know, given your audience, it's particularly important to say, this is when LGBTIQ friendly governments like the Canadian government really have to pick up slack, you know, really have a lot of work to do. Because in places where people are unsafe, friendly diplomatic communities and international solidarity can mean the difference between life and death. Even as we've seen progress in some countries, it also feels like there's even a step back internally. Obviously, India's decision to

repeal the sodomy law, great news. Are things progressing otherwise in India? Are things looking up? Or is there kind of a tension that still exists in India with some ingrained homophobia, transphobia, so on? Yeah. So definitely, we achieved a legal recognition of the community. But this is just the beginning of the new challenge, which is now to fight for our rights from the society. Because a lot many people were not happy with this court decision. So that's why the foundation of this legal recognition would help us in going to the communities, going to the societies to get acceptance and better understanding of the community.

So I think that is one of the challenges. Of course, India is progressing, especially with regards to transgender rights, because even before this law change in our country, this law change in our country. In 2014, the Supreme Court of India has given us the rights to the transgenders. And currently, a bill is being passed in the parliament to make it an act to give protection to the transgenders, to give them rights to education, health, social entitlements, and a lot of benefits have been given to the transgenders. So there has been, social entitlements, and a lot of benefits I've been giving to the transgender. So there has been, I would say, there has been considerable progress which is happening in our country. You work a lot with queer youth in India. Do you get the impression from them that things are really meaningfully changing on the ground? Is it easier for them to come out? Is it easier

than it was for you? There is a mixed opinion. There are a lot of people in the community who are now willing to come out and they are willing to tell their parents and not get succumbed to their marriage pressure. But there is a fear of being thrown out from homes. So not a lot of work now needs to be done, even if there's a lot of stigma and discrimination existing in the corporate workplace. So similarly, the work needs to be done for family counseling, parent counseling, which we are doing. So that's one step. But at the same time, we have to work parallelly educating and at the same time, handle these crisis situations. Jessica, at the end of May, President Trump tweeted, congratulations and happy pride, which I think people were surprised by to begin with. But he also said that it would be part of his mission

to ensure the decriminalization of homosexuality abroad. Is there any stock to put in that promise from the president? And especially given his track record at home, I mean, what's up with that? Have we really seen any movement from the Trump administration on progressing the rights of LGBTQ people abroad? I'm looking at the audience right now. Well, I think there are some questions.

I think it's hard to encourage people to celebrate and honor pride when you're systematically dismantling transgender rights in this country. Yes. this country. And I think it's hard to look at the track record of the U.S. president without seeing a series of escalating failures on LGBTI rights and the rights of other marginalized populations who also have queer members of their community. We have seen historic legal victories in recent years. I think the way the U.S. could be most supportive is not standing in the way. Funding local and international LGBTIQ organizations that have community-based relationships and networks and have an analysis of the local conditions, and also by reacting when there are gross human rights violations happening. I don't remember anything from the Trump administration when over 100 men who were

perceived to be gay were arrested and tortured in Chechnya. That is the lowest bar possible. I mean, if you can't respond to mass arbitrary arrest and torture, then you don't actually have the credibility to talk about a human rights agenda. You know, the U.S. withdrew from the U.N.'s Human Rights Council and has been systematically blocking human rights affirming resolutions at the UN. We expect better from the US. We expect a historic focus on civil and political rights, an opposition to violence, and the US can and should do better. Let me ask both of you. I mean, a lot of the time the conversation on the international scene kind of begins and ends with decriminalization. It's sort of once we repeal all those laws the British imported to these countries, and once homosexuality you know, social housing for queer people in the global South

or in countries, you know, that have a more recent history with, you know, talking about LGBTQ issues, whether it's policing, whether it's security, you know, where does this conversation need to go and what do we need to start looking towards to actually make sure that queer people abroad aren't just, you know, legal but safe? You know, there were a few years ago when every private foundation I would speak with would say, you know, when we talk about our LGBTIQ priorities, our priorities are decriminalizing homosexuality. And I would say, but that's not enough. Of course it's not enough. Why would that ever be enough? Why would the removal of negative laws ever be enough? And actually, there are many countries that will not decriminalize homosexuality in our lifetimes

or in several lifetimes. So we have to be more nuanced, more multifaceted, and more ambitious. And so where should we actually go? We should focus on positive rights. We should focus on supporting LGBTIQ organizations in every single country in the world. That matters. That produces long-lasting change. The track record shows that decriminalization is not ambitious enough for us. Yeah, true. I take it forward from what Jessica said, that there's a lot of work to be done. I mean, we just need to keep talking. I mean, you don't have to silence yourself. Just talk and try and talk loud so that people hear you,

people listen to you, and get the change happen. That's a great place to end up. I want to thank you all for joining me. Mavendra Singh Gohil is a crown prince of the Majaraha of Rajapipa in Gujarat, India. He's also the founder of the Majaraha of Rajapipa in Gujarat, India. He's also the founder of the Lakshya Trust, a charity advocating for the LGBTQ community in the Indian state of Gujarat. Jessica Stern is the executive director of Outright Action International, which advocates for LGBTQ rights abroad. And I'm your host, Justin Ling. We have one more panel. Stick with us.

Thank you so much. For our next panel, we wanna unpack a little bit of the LGBTQ community's past, present and future. Kiera St. James is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group. Eric Sawyer is an HIV AIDS activist and the Co-Founder of ACT UP. And Catherine Franke is a Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University in New York. Please welcome our panel. Thanks for joining us. Great to be with you.

Kira, I want to ask you, on a really personal level, how are you feeling? I mean, it's been a tough year to be trans. I mean, it's been a tough year to be in the community in general, I think. But a lot of the progress that was made in America over several years, I think, started ebbing backwards in the past year. On a very personal level, how are you feeling? started ebbing backwards in the past year. On a very personal level, how are you feeling? I think, you know, there's a saying that we use in our community, understanding like progress is not linear, you know, so we have years of progress or we had years of progress under the Obama administration and now we're seeing that progress being eradicated. So I'm feeling

left behind, you know, and I'm feeling what a lot of my community members voice often when I convene with them, whether here in New York City or nationally, is that we're being left behind, we're being erased again. And so that is of great concern to me, you know, and like I focus on policies a lot. But at the same time, I also understand the importance of having a contingency plan to address the immediate needs of my community because you know we fought for gender we got gender gender expression and Discrimination Act passed after 17 years right so that's great but you know but my community is still lagging behind when we talk about employment opportunities housing we live in a city that is becoming more and more gentrified. So these are issues that are impacting my community.

So some income discrimination, you know, so these are things that weigh heavy on me, you know, because I speak on behalf of so many who have yet to find their voice, you know, so I feel it's important to really highlight that. You know, World Pride, you, so I feel it's important to really highlight that. You know, World Pride, you know, I think it's going to be great for some, but not for most, you know. And so just really, I feel it's important to really make sure folks understand the fight continues. You said left behind. Do you feel that way by your government or by your community as well?

I mean, do you think the LGB part of the equation has done enough to continue advocating for the T and the Q and every other letter? You all are catching up. I would say folks in the LGB community are understanding that you have to invest in a trans community. The fact that we've been afterthoughts for so long in this fight that we spearheaded, there's a lot of catching up that we have to focus on. And it first starts with equity and investing in our community. Eric and Catherine, you know, you're both critical of the way that Pride sort of exists now as a party, as a kind of a corporate event. Where did it go wrong? Pride's been around for one way, shape, or form for 50 years. Where did it lose its way in your view? Well, one of the things we've seen is the corporatization of the movement itself

in the form of large nonprofits that have a very almost corporate model in how they're run, largely with privileged white people at the top of the organizations and boards comprised of privileged white folks. And so they see themselves as more accountable, many of these organizations do, to those corporate boards than to a much broader community. Now, I'm a law professor. I make little lawyers as my day job. Not in this building.

We're at New York Law School now, but another law school in the city. And one of the things I think that's also a problem is that so many of these organizations and our movement are led by lawyers. And lawyers fix the kinds of, or create as a political horizon the sorts of things that lawyers can fix. Marriage is one of them. And the lawyers did fix the marriage problem, but in a way that left behind an awful lot of folks who don't want to get married, can't get married, or have a

political critique of marriage, as I do. And so marriage was in many ways an extremely conservative and kind of modest political goal. You know, Kiara noted how some of the organizations in New York State have left behind so many members of our community, that statewide gay rights organization in New York State closed after we gained marriage equality in this state because they felt there was nothing else to do. Mission accomplished, that's what they said. Right? Mission accomplished. Even before we passed ENDA in the state legislature that Kiara mentioned that created, you know, basic protections in employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity. There is so much more work to do. But the agenda gets set, by and large, by people who don't suffer the kinds of forms of discrimination and disadvantage that are economic-based,

that are gender identity-based, that are based on race, immigration status, a range of different issues, never mind HIV-positive people in our community, and the other broad set of health-related issues that we all face in what is largely a healthcare system that is for-profit and privileges the lives of cisgendered people. I would agree with everything that you said. And, you know, I helped start ACT UP. And when a number of us took to the streets and, you know, put our bodies on the line and got arrested time after time after time, disrupting government organizations, presidents, vice presidents, you know, heads of Congress, people that were running pharmaceutical companies, people started

to get afraid of us. And the media started to listen to us to hear why we were so pissed off and what our messaging was. And, you know, we gave a face to not only people living with HIV, but LGBTQ people and let the world see that, hey, we're human beings just like everybody else. You know, we have rights that spurred more and more people to come out so everybody knew somebody was lgbt or q and so that gave us power and got us listened to uh but then in came the gay white men of privilege who kind of like usurped all that power, took all the seats at the table that the AIDS activists

like fought for and started bringing forth agendas like gays in the military or marriage equality that, you know, a lot of people, especially people who aren't really privileged, you know, could give a shit about. They're concerned about, you know, food security, about getting a place to live, getting a job where they can earn a living wage. And that privilege and the collection of corporate LGBT groups interested in investing in pride, I think, is what took the gay liberation marches and events to be celebrations and dancing boys and speedos, instead of people talking about the rights that they they need and the violations that they face on a daily basis one thing that seems to always be a consistent part of the conversation around uh the struggle for queer rights is is policing i mean whether it was police kicking down the doors at the stonewall inn or whether it was you know police

arresting you know act up uh activists police seem to always be always be on the other end of this equation. But recently, you've seen a lot of pride marches welcome police into the parade with open arms. You've not really seen policing be part of the discussion by a lot of these large NGOs or organizations. Has that been frustrating, Kara? Is it frustrating to not see policing be a bigger part of this conversation? Yeah, absolutely. You know, black and brown communities, especially TGNC communities, are not particular fans of the police department. You know, there tends to be a lot of hyper-policing of black and brown bodies, not only in the city, but nationally. So the police department is not necessarily friends of our community. We often see them and believe them to see us as suspects.

So we don't really have that comfort with the police department. And it's getting even worse, as I said earlier, because of gentrification. We're just really hyper-policed in ways that we were not in the past. I think one of the problems is not only with the police, but it's about the whole judicial legislative system that allows laws to be brought forward and policing practices to be brought forward that trample people's civil liberties and empower the police, enable the police to abuse members of our community, especially people who are trans or queer or gender non-conforming, because they may not have the power to get a fancy lawyer or to get sympathetic press to cover their issues. And so I think we do need to return to more of those street demonstration types of practice,

but we always have to keep in the back of our minds how we do that in a manner that doesn't endanger our activists in our community, especially those that are the most vulnerable amongst us, people of color, people who are trans or gender non-conforming. Now, you know, we tell ourselves as a community that the things we learned in the past, the lessons we learned, the strategies we learned, are supposed to be the ones we have going forward to stop the pushback, to continuously push that arc of moral history towards justice. In a lot of ways, you haven't really seen that. A lot of the larger activist organizations or LGBTQ organizations feel a bit rudderless. And I think all the three of you have described that a fair bit. I've been obsessed with history a lot recently.

It's what we've done in the podcast. Looking back and I'm realizing that a lot of the history of the community isn't well documented. It lives, there's oral histories in a lot of cases. It lives in people's memories, not necessarily written down or broadcast in any real way. I guess if you were to give to the next generation a piece of advice or a story or something to direct them, what would it be? Carol, let's start with you. I always bring up ACT UP, how ACT UP didn't wait on the government to step in. You know, so I always use that when I talk to the black and brown TGNC community here in New York City as well as nationally, and it's how to speak truth to power, demobilize without waiting for your government, a government that has consistently failed black and brown communities here in this country. And so

I talk about what is your contingency plan? So it's really important for us to really talk about how do we create insular thriving communities while we're dealing with administration like we're dealing with now. And so like some of the conversations, you know, it's radical, but I feel it's important for us to have them and commit to having them. I come from Texas. So in Texas, we have a lot of ghost towns that you can purchase. So one of the conversations I'm having with folks is, like, what would it look like if we put our money into a pot to purchase a town that is ran for us and by us? You know, it's radical, you you know but that's something we need to

look at like if we're being targeted then there needs to be ways that we can create our spaces where we're able to thrive and pretend look out for one another without all this hyper policing that is going on now and even that idea it's not it you know is one that was existed in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s of creating sort of homocentric or queer-centric communities, whether they be buildings or houses or towns. So I guess to some degree, are we just sort of relearning the lessons we should have learned 20, 30, 40 years ago? Eric, what do you think? Yeah, I think we are trying to relearn the lessons from many years ago. I mean, you started off by saying,

you know, we haven't really documented our history. And there are some of us who are like pissed off about the rewriting of history that's being done now by, in a lot of cases, people who weren't really involved in the activism of the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s. And, you know, involved in the activism of the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s. And, you know, we're trying to systematically archive that history as it really happened. One of the things that a project that I'm pushing is the idea of, you know, documenting the history of the HIV response and then literally examining it and setting up teaching modules that can teach people about how do you do community organizing, how do you do consensus building, how do you do a press release, how do you do a demonstration, you know, how do you do a legal challenge, a class action

lawsuit or whatever, building on the history of ACT UP. And I do a lot of talking and give a lot of lectures around that about telling people that if you want to fix a problem you've got to do your homework you've got to come up with a clear background statement on what the problem is and and and you have to like have a clear list of demands with an action plan on how you think those problems can be addressed. You have to have the confidence that, you know, your group or you as a single individual can actually change history and actually solve a problem. And then you have to, as Kira said, go and, you know, speak truth to power and demand that, you know, the human rights or the problems that you're trying to address

are honored, in terms of the rights are honored and that the problems you're trying to correct are addressed. And then you have to fight like hell and not give up until you succeed in having whatever the problems or the human injustice rectified. Catherine? So in my last book, Wedlocked, The Perils of Marriage Equality, I sort of posed the history of marriage as a form of liberation for both the gay community and for African Americans in this country about really asking the question of whether we can truly be free

through recognition by the state. So what I did was go back and look at the history of whether we can truly be free through recognition by the state. So what I did was go back and look at the history of what it meant for African Americans to marry for the first time at the end of the Civil War, how important that was, and what kind of freedom that actually enabled. And what it really did is create a new relationship of black people to the state that was in some ways reproducing forms of enslavement and racism that I think we ought to look we should have as a gay community look at what meant for us to be free through the institution of marriage today where we're inviting the state into our intimate relationships immediately after being criminalized. So in some ways, I think taking a break from the

state is probably not a bad idea for people for whom the state has never been our friend, and particularly for the people of color in our community, that's the case. Some members of our community have a romance with the idea of the state paying attention to us in a positive way through the institution of marriage, perhaps through serving in the military, through serving in the police, that sort of thing. And I think that's the kind of politics we ought to question through looking at our history, through thinking about how groups like ACT UP actually saw the state as a problem rather than as part of the solution and focused the politics

of activism around HIV on empowering the community, educating ourselves, empowering ourselves, and proposing solutions, actually creating solutions, to care for each other rather than looking to the state to do it. The state will never be our friends, and I think building a kind of suspicion of the state into our politics and a romance with community is probably the better message to give to the next generations. I want to thank all of you three so much. It was incredibly enlightening. Kiara St. James is the executive director and co-founder of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group. Eric Sawyer is an HIV AIDS activist and co-founder of ACT UP.

And Katherine Franke is a professor of law, gender, and sexuality at Columbia University in New York. Thanks so much. Thank you. I want to thank everyone for being with me. And thanks to you podcast listeners for tuning in to a special bonus episode of Uncover the Village. We're live from World Pride in New York City on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. You can listen to the entire series of Uncover the Village wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode was written and produced by Cameron Perrier. Our senior producer is Tanya Springer. Our audio tech is Cecil Fernandez. And our executive producer is Arif Noorani. And I'm your host, Justin Ling. Thank you. For more CBC Original Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash originalpodcasts.