Gay Activists and the Liberation Movements

Gay and lesbian activists of the early 70s had been involved in civil rights, student, antiwar, feminist and counterculture actions of the period, learning tactics and sharing the ideology of other liberation groups.  At the Gay Liberation Front - DC (GLF-DC), Michael Ferri had strong ties to the peace movement.  Bruce Pennington had worked for Liberation News Service.  New York-based John Scagliotti, just 19, already had been very involved as a leftist and antiwar activist.  Warren Blumenfeld had been a member of Students for a Democratic Society and a founder of GLF-San Jose before coming to Washington, DC.   Perry Brass, a New York Gay Liberation Front member, had been involved in antiwar and gay activism before coming to DC.  Other members of GLF-DC, such as Tim Tomassi who provided medical care for the Black Panthers in DC, worked with and supported local and national  liberation groups.  Gay activists expected that other liberation groups, however heterosexual they might be, would reciprocate their respect and support.

In announcing the formation of GLF-DC in the local underground paper Quicksilver Times (June 23, 1970), Dave Aiken wrote

"Gay people are perhaps the last oppressed group to get themselves together ... It's time for gays to surface, join with their comrades (both gays and right straights) and fight repression in all forms... Power to the People! Gay Power to gay people!"

Black Panther leader Huey Newton’s August 15, 1970 speech validated gay and women’s liberation as true liberation movements.  The speech heartened gay men and lesbians' feeling of inclusion in the radical left.  In response, GLF-DC and gay liberationists from across the country supported the Panthers' November 1970 Peoples Revolutionary Constitutional Convention in Washington, DC by providing logistical support and participating in convention discussions.  A group of GLF-Chicago members came to DC for the convention and, having been arrested following a riotous protest at the Zephyr Restaurant, had to stay on in DC.  The Chicagoans settled into the GLF House (1620 S St. NW) and the new Skyline Faggots collective (1624 S St. NW).

For gay activists, the 1971 Mayday protest was both an antiwar protest as well as another validation of their presence among new left liberation groups.  As with the Panthers' convention, gay activists wholeheartedly supported the planning and execution of the protest.  Scagliotti has commented that

"Gay people felt on the social level more comfortable with counterculture people.  The only space for gay people on the left was in the radical caucus."

The Mayday Protest

from the Bruce Pennington collection at Rainbow History Project

A new style of antiwar protest was planned for the first week of May 1971.  Taking as their theme, "if the government won't stop the war, we'll stop the government," the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice had spent weeks planning a massive disruption of the morning commute in Washington, DC.  On April 24, 1971 a typical massive one day protest had brought nearly 500,000 antiwar protesters to the city for a peaceful demonstration.

Mayday would be something completely different.

From offices at 1029 Vermont Avenue NW (Suite 906), Rennie Davis and other organizers issued a tactical manual for the disruption, targeting twenty-one key bridges and intersections for blockage.  Rather than mounting a single massive protest they took a page from women's movement organizers and structured the protest around smaller cohesive groups or 'tribes' that were assigned particular sites and tasks within the protest.  The 'tribes' were self organized and self identifying affinity groups whose members knew each other, would be less likely to panic, and could look after each other in the midst of the disruption and police counter tactics.  Each tribe or regional group would organize its own housing and support operations.  Mayday organizers coordinated activities through the regional and affinity groups.

As the protesters assembled in the week following the April demonstration, they organized into tribes or regional groups (e.g. New York, Pennsylvania, etc.).  Mayday fell on Saturday that year, so the bulk of the disruption was scheduled for Monday morning May 3rd.  To accommodate the protesters, the Mayday Tribe had received a permit for camping in West Potomac Park.  Protesters named their camp Peace Park, or Algonquin Peace Park.  By Saturday evening, the Washington Star estimated 50,000 people were camped in the park in tents and sleeping bags, with foragers bringing in firewood and food from across the city, Virginia, and Maryland.  The Gay Liberation Front, according to Warren Blumenfeld, had a tent near the Lincoln Memorial.  As Perry Brass searched the mass of campers for the gay liberation site, he finally saw small gay liberation flags on a tent and found his way to his gay colleagues.  The Washington Post correspondent reported (Washington Post, May 1, 1971, page 16, "US Troups Move Into Area") roving groups of gays chanting

"Ho, ho, homosexual, the ruling class is ineffectual."

By the weekend, the party atmosphere of earlier in the week was turning more serious and political.  The encampment offered training in non-violence by the Quaker Action Group on Saturday.  Speakers and rock music shared the microphones in the park.  Beer, smoke, and politics were in the air.  A Saturday evening music festival was planned to feature Arlo Guthrie, James Brown, Peter Paul and Mary and others.

Nicholas von Hoffman, writing in the Washington Post (May 2, 1971, page A1) painted a word portrait of

"... the Woodstock Nation in Washington, a huge nomadic historical event ... At night the smoke from the hundreds of campfires is so thick it burns your eyes and dries your throat.  At night especially they do seem to be a different people with their own strange emblems, customs, diet, drinks, and games... Boone's Farm, Apple Wine, Frisbees, Vietcong flags and cassette tape decks for their music, everywhere their music ... They're coming in heavy from places like Terre Haute, part of the American geography that used to supply the manpower for beating up the smelly war protesters."

Peace Park, Washington, DC May 2, 1971
copyright The Washington Post from collection of the Washington Star

By Saturday, the Mayday Tribe had scaled back to ten the number of sites to be disrupted on Monday morning:

• the Key (and Canal Rd), Roosevelt, Memorial, and 14th street bridges;
• Dupont, Washington, Thomas and Scott Circles;
• Mount Vernon Square; and
• the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Constitution Avenue.

In preparation for Monday morning, tribes and other affinity groups were to disperse to staging sites around the city on Sunday night.  At dawn Monday, the Mayday tribes would take control of their assigned sites and disrupt the morning commute, repeating the disruption on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Confronted with the possibility of unprecedented disruption, the federal and local government prepared a massive response.  By Sunday evening, a mix of Metropolitan Police, National Guardsmen, and troops was nearing 10,000 men deployed in and around the city.  Trucks, tow trucks, bulldozers, and other equipment were positioned to remove traffic obstacles placed by protesters.  Buses were readied to transport the thousands that were expected to be arrested.  On April 29th, the phones were turned off in the Mayday Tribe offices.  The police response to Saturday's protests at the Department of Justice netted the first 339 arrests of what would become a week of massive arrests (The number arrested is usually put at ten or eleven thousand. The Washington Post reported 7,000 arrests on Monday May 3rd: Washington Post May 4, 1971, page A12.)

 

GLF and Mayday

Gay activists helped organize the Mayday protests.  Warren Blumenfeld and John Scagliotti were among the gay activists staffing the Mayday Tribe office on Vermont Avenue.  It wasn't an entirely positive experience.  Scagliotti recalls that

"In the Mayday office, gays were treated as marginal persons.  In the office, gays were used as secretaries, ... and did the shit work, the paper work."

The week before the protests, Scagliotti testified before the Fulbright Senate committee on the conduct of the war.  One of Scagliotti's roles was to buy junk cars in Virginia to abandon on the bridges to block traffic.  Paul Kuntzler, a local gay activist who had managed Kameny's campaign for Congress earlier in the year, remembers gathering broken glass to strew on bridges and roads to disrupt the Monday morning commute.  Jose Ramos of GLF-DC served as a liaison between the Mayday tribe and Gay Mayday.

Gay Mayday was only a small component of the overall Mayday protest.  Some have estimated that were as few as 300 gay liberationists, mostly male, participating in Mayday.  Gay Mayday groups were assigned to disrupt Rock Creek Parkway traffic and the M St. bridge above it.  The location was already familiar to many gay men as the 'Black Forest' cruising area.  Gay Liberation Front used its collectives on S St. NW for housing and other support and Grace Episcopal Church (1041 Wisconsin Avenue NW) as a center for activities.  Amazing Grace, as the church was nicknamed in the community, was regularly used by Gay Liberation Front for its meetings.  For Gay Mayday, the church served as a planning and staging center.  Evicted from Peace Park on Sunday morning, gay activists regrouped at the church and spent Sunday night there.  On Monday morning it was a short walk to the target site.

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