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And they did! They were frustrated, fed up with being told that we were bad people, that we had no business proclaiming our right to exist, that we were sinners and we were bound for hell.”īut that didn’t stop Saadat and all of the other organizers from doing it again the following year, and the year after that, and the year after that. Some of the men took their banners away and tore them up and told them to get out of the march. “We were attacked verbally by the people we call the “Turn and Burn” people, who carry giant signs that said we were going to hell. The march Saadat helped organize in 1976 was a demand for equal rights, physically moving through the city and ending at the Tom McCall waterfront park.Īs Saadat recalls, some of the counter-protesters tried to infiltrate the march with signs that read: “Turn or Burn.”
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But that event was a little different because it was actually a stationary celebration. It had about the same turnout, around two hundred people or so. One year prior to the march Portland had its first public Pride event. I can’t tell you much about the rest of the day except having done it and going you know, sorta like we lived through it, we weren’t attacked.” “We were marching along and doing chants, being scared and seeing people on the sidewalk who we knew were gay or lesbian, but who were afraid to join the march,” says Saadat. Whether it’s putting out an album with Pink Martini or mentoring the next generation of activists, Saadat is, as she puts it: “still trying to raise hell.”īut at this particular moment, she’s trying to remember a day in 1976, when she and a few others organized Portland’s first gay rights march. Saadat has also worked for the city of Portland, Multnomah County, and the State of Oregon, championing more equitable and inclusive policies.Įven in retirement, she keeps busy. LGBTQ+ activist, Kathleen Saadat, helped organize Portland, Oregon's first gay rights march.
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Most notably in 1992, when she helped lead the campaign that defeated the viciously anti-gay Ballot Measure 9. She has a lot of memories involving marches after spending over 40 years of her life fighting for the equal rights of Oregon’s Black and LGBTQ+ communities. Saadat looks up as if hoping to find the memory she’s trying to recall. “I just remember being on like 3rd or 4th street, marching north and turning on to the Waterfront park. “I don’t remember where the march started,” says Kathleen Sadat. The retaliation might not have been as big or as dramatic as the image of a brick flying through a police car window but it carried the same weight. In Oregon, police raids of gay and lesbian bars were common well into the 1970′s.
Many American cities have experienced versions of nights like the Stonewall Inn, times in history when police have brutality targeted the gay community by enforcing discriminatory laws and ordinances. Yet so much quiet labor has gone into turning one violent night into a month-long party. Now, every June, people around the world commemorate that one night for an entire month. Gray Pride during a parade for Portland Pride, 1998. The years and years of hard work that veteran LGBTQ+ activists put in to transform fear and hate into wider sentiments of love and acceptance, whether they be sincere or not.Īt least one study shows there’s a large group of Americans who know nothing about the Stonewall Riots.Īnd if you are among this group of Americans, here’s a quick summary: In the early hours of June 28th,1969 an uprising took place at the Stonewall Inn in New York City that sparked a national gay rights and liberation movement. With all the fun and celebration surrounding Gay Pride events, it might be less common for people to think about the decades of struggle.