Image courtesy of Nuestro Stories.
Many people in our community have paved the way for others to thrive, and today we’d like to take a moment to talk about just a few of them. These women have all paved the way for trans rights, and this is our way of saying thank you.
Felicia Elizondo
Felicia “Flames” Elizondo was a trailblazer for trans rights, and for all the LGBTQ+ community. She was at the beginning of the movement and stayed in it until she took her last breath at the age of 74.
Felicia lived in San Francisco, more specifically The Tenderloin, during the early 60s and was known to frequent Compton’s Cafeteria on Turk St.
Open 24 hours, Compton’s had become a place where many of the LGBTQ+ community would come together to seek refuge. While the streets could be unsafe for anyone, police were known to harass anyone who appeared to be something “outside of their born gender,” and many in the LGBTQ+ community found themselves subject to harassment, arrest, or violence.
Those same police officers often made it a point to conduct raids at Compton’s. The attacks and harassment eventually caused Compton’s honor to cease its 24-hour policy and begin closing the diner at midnight. The sudden policy change caused a protest to break out.
Like previous instances at Cooper’s Donuts in Los Angeles (1959) and later at Stonewall Inn in New York City (1969), police officers arrived at Compton’s to forcibly remove and detain protesters. Much like other historical incidents, people were fed up.
A riot broke out, with over two days of protests ensuing.
It was perhaps the birth of her activism, but it was most certainly not its death.
Felicia would go on to organize the San Francisco Trans March. She would champion renaming a portion of Turk St after Vicki Marlane, a transgender performer, and activist who passed in 2011. The march raised innumerable amounts of money for the trans community, HIV awareness and prevention (Elizondo had been diagnosed with AIDs earlier in life), and various non-profits such as the LGBTQ+ Community Center in San Francisco, The Shanti House, and Project Open Hand.
Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia Rivera was a tireless fighter for the most marginalized voices in the LGBTQ+ movement. Known for her role in the Stonewall Inn riots, perhaps the most famous and catalytic riot that occurred during the 50s and 60s, Rivera was known for speaking up and speaking out against the silencing of transgender voices, especially Black and Brown voices, from the larger conversation of the gay rights movement.
Born in New York City, Sylvia’s life was not an easy one. With an absent father and a mother who died from suicide when Sylvia was only three, she was forced to move in with a grandmother who did not approve of Sylvia or how she conducted herself.
Running away at 11, Sylvia was faced with an early introduction to sexual exploitation for survival. Not long after running away, Sylvia met Martha P Johnson, another pioneer in the trans movement who fought against the exclusion of trans voices of color. Marsha became like a mother to Sylvia, guiding her politics and encouraging her to stick up for herself. The two were together in 1969 when the Stonewall uprising occurred.
Mimicking the incident of the Cooper Donut’s Riot and the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, the Stonewall Inn Riots began when police officers attempted to sweep the well-known establishment and make arrests, Sylvia being one of the people initially detained.
Fed up with the constant harassment, Sylvia began resisting arrest, along with others, prompting those not detained to fight back against police officers.
While Rivera may not have thrown the first stone at police officers that night, she was the second. For six days, 17 years old Rivera assisted in leading protests, holding space, and resisting the police.
Despite her role, she was often excluded from the larger movement because of her transgender identity.
Rivera and Johnson started the STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) to counter the groups who were leaving them out. The group eventually grew to have not only the organization but STAR house, which housed those in the community who needed it most.
Though her past traumas often affected her throughout her life, showing itself in her substance abuse, housing issues, and eventual suicide attempt, Rivera continued to fight for her community until she passed in 2002.
Lorena Borjas
Born in Veracruz, Mexico, and eventually ending up in Queens, NY, Lorena Borjas was an activist who advocated for the transgender community — especially at the intersection of immigration and sex trafficking. Known as the Mother of the Latinx Transgenders in NYC, her work was recognized nationwide.
Having moved to the United States specifically to achieve hormone therapy and transition, Lorena found herself in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood known for its large immigrant population.
Finding a job in a belt factory, she ended up sharing an apartment with quite a few women who worked as sex workers in the area. That was where Lorena first began to care for the people around her.
She would walk the streets handing out condoms and food to the workers while attempting to connect them with other resources they may need. Lorena opened her home up as an HIV testing site for those in the transgender community to have a safe space to test. She would raise bail funds to get the sex workers who had been arrested out of jail.
Having lived both the transgender and immigrant experience, Lorena’s true passion was breaking the arrest-jail-deportation pipeline that occurred within her neighborhoods and communities.
In 2011 she founded the Lorena Borjas Community Fund with her colleague Chase Strangio to assist in the fight against that cycle. She continued to act as a beacon of her community until she passed in 2020 from what was reported as complications from COVID.
