To commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and Trans History Month, TurkxTaylor Initiative presents a screening of the Emmy-winning documentary, Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, co-directed by Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman. The film tells the then-little-known story of the first well-documented trans and queer uprising against police violence in the United States—a 1966 riot in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, three years before the famous Stonewall Riots.
A panel discussion featuring Susan Stryker and guest panelists, facilitated by Ach Kab, follows the screening.
Drawing from the documentary’s archival footage and oral histories, the panel turns toward the question of what kinds of futures these histories make possible. The film—and the riot—becomes a point of inspiration for imagining alternative futures for Compton’s site as a microcosm of collective worldmaking. Grounded on trans liberation, the panel invites reflection on the layered struggles “at the crossroads of Turk and Taylor Streets”—against policing, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, displacement, ableism and environmental destruction. What forms of life, care and relation can emerge when we take seriously the principle “none of us are free until all of us are free?”
NR, 57 mins., 2005.
Connect:
TurkxTaylor Initiative - website | ComptonsxCoalition Initiative - Instagram
Ach Kab - Instagram | Susan Stryker - website
Bios:
Susan Stryker retired from the University of Arizona as Professor of Gender and Women's Studies in 2020, and currently holds a distinguished visiting appointment at Stanford University's Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Stryker's historical research, theoretical writings, media-making, activism and academic field-building activities have helped shape the conversation on trans issues since the early 1990s.
Ach Kab (they/them) is a butch arab dyke worker with the Industrial Workers of the World. Their practice is grounded in deep support and collaboration, offering their labor primarily as a technician for live performance, an archivist for the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, and an organizer with CounterPulse Workers United. They love to dance, craft, swim, wrestle, play the banjo, explore secrets and listen.
dee(dee) c. ardan (she/her; Oakland, CA) is a black trans dyke and devotee of black study who considers cultural work integral to political theorizing and praxis. She’s concerned with the dis/order of psychosocial life vis-à-vis the possibility of renewed liberation movements, exploring these matters by way of black-and-trans-and-queer living. She’s presently working things out through maroon art: an aesthetic practice that troubles the property-logics and state craft that undergird and circumscribe public and private life alike, an art that refuses accumulation, commodification and individuation through rogue experimentation and improvisations.
Jonathan Cordero is the Metush (Chair) of the Ramaytush Tribe and an Affiliated Scholar at the Indigenous Law Center, UC Law, San Francisco. Dr. Cordero received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written several articles on California Indians during the Mission Period. Dr. Cordero works as a consultant in both the public and private sectors, especially in the arts, and he serves as a leader, speaker and activist in the broader Ohlone and Chumash communities.
Toshio Meronek hosts the podcast Sad Francisco, and their writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Nation, them and Truthout. Their collaboration with activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary was awarded the 2024 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction.
About:
The TurkxTaylor Initiative (TxT) is an ad hoc group that has come together to liberate Compton’s historic site and envision an alternative future, one that honors its legacy of resistance. TxT has convened the Compton’s x Coalition (CxC), a cross-movement alliance committed to transitioning the site to community stewardship. CxC approaches commemoration as a living practice tied to community building and collective imagination
LOCATION:Main Library - Koret Auditorium CLASS:PUBLIC TRANSP:TRANSPARENT END:VEVENT BEGIN:VALARM TRIGGER:-PT1440M ACTION:DISPLAY DESCRIPTION:Event Reminder - Film: Screaming Queens END:VALARM END:VCALENDAR