transsuccess:

Sylvia Rae Rivera was an American transgender woman and trans* activist. Rivera was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance and helped found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group dedicated to helping homeless young street trans women, with her friend Marsha P. Johnson.  She was abandoned by her birth father José Rivera early in life and became an orphan after her mother committed suicide when Rivera was three years old.  Rivera was then raised by her Venezuelan grandmother, who disapproved of Rivera’s effeminate behavior, particularly after Rivera began to wear women’s makeup in fourth grade.  As a result, Rivera began living on the streets at the age of eleven, where she joined a community of drag queens.

Rivera’s activism began during the Vietnam War, civil rights, and feminist movements and fully bloomed around the time of the Stonewall Riots.  She also became involved in Puerto Rican and African American youth activism.  At different times in her life, Sylvia Rivera battled substance abuse issues and lived on the streets.  Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, the mainline community (and often the queer community) were leaving behind.  Rivera refused to have the drag culture erased from the gay rights agenda by assimilationist gay leaders who were seeking to make the community look more attractive to the heterosexual majority.  In 1995 she appeared in the Arthur Dong documentary episode “Out Rage ‘69”, part of the PBS series The Question of Equality.  She traveled to Italy for the Millennium March in 2000 where she was acclaimed as the Mother of all gay people.  In early 2001, STAR fought for the New York City Transgender Rights Bill and for a trans-inclusive New York State Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act.

Sylvia also attacked the Human Rights Commission and the Empire State Pride Agenda as organizations which were standing in the way of transgender rights. On her death bed she met with Matt Foreman and Joe Grabarz of the Empire State Pride Agenda in order to negotiate trans inclusion in ESPA’s political structure and agenda.  Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19, 2002 of complications from liver cancer.  In the last five years of her life Sylvia had renewed her political activity, giving many speeches concerning the Stonewall Riots and the necessity for unity among transgender people to fight for their historic legacy as people in the forefront of the LGBT movement.

(via eyre)