New York City to honor LGBTQ activists with permanent statues

Two LGBTQ rights activists will be honored with permanent statues in New York City.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera will be recognized in the city in which they organized to better the lives of gay homeless youth, New York City announced Thursday.

However, the movement they helped build often turned its back on them and the trans cause. Their history has been erased, minimized and whitewashed.

Today, we announced that we will honor them both with permanent statues in New York City, a first in the world. #Stonewall50

— NYC Mayor’s Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) May 30, 2019

The monument has yet to be commissioned and will be paid for out of $10 million allocated for new public artworks, The Associated Press reports. 

It will stand in Greenwich Village, just a block away from the Stonewall Inn — the site of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion that Johnson and Rivera took part in. {mosads}

The monument will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the uprising, viewed as a key moment in gay rights history, The New York Times reports. 

The decision to commission the statue is part of the city’s push to diversify its monuments. The city claims the monument is the first of its kind in the world. 

Johnson and Rivera continued their activism, forming the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries in 1970, according to the AP. 

Johnson died in 1992 at 46 and Rivera in 2002 at age 50. Both lived difficult lives, despite being celebrated activists, and often lived on the streets, according to the AP.