Marsha & Sylvia, founders of STAR House
Excerpt from “Queens In Exile: The Forgotten Ones” by Sylvia Rivera about STAR House located at 213 E. 2nd Street on the LES.
After Stonewall Marsha and I just kept up the struggle. We saw the need after being out on the streets at our ages. We needed to help our own people. Even when we were living on 44th Street, Marsha was always taking in people, gave them a place to stay. At that time, before Stonewall, everyone always had a house full of people, people crashing because there was no room. If one queen had a place and you were her friend, she would gladly let you sleep on her floor or share her bed. There would be not just the two of us; there would be maybe four or five. And everybody was sneaking around not wanting to get caught by who ever we were renting from.
STAR House was born out of the Weinstein Hall demonstration because there were so many of us living together. With Marsha and myself renting two rooms and the hotel room and even then we still didn’t have enough room to house people. With the help of GLF and gay youth we threw our first fundraiser and raised enough money to go to the Mafia and rent our first building. They got us a building for $300 a month. Marsha and I and Bubbles and Andora and Bambi kept that building going by selling ourselves out on the streets while trying to keep the children of the streets. And a lot of them made good, a lot of them went home. Some of them I lost; they went to the streets. We lost them but we tried to do the best we could for them. The contribution of the ones who didn’t make it out into the streets, who wanted something different, was to liberate food from in front of the A&P and places like that because back then they used to leave everything out in front of the store before it opened.
So the house was well supplied, the buildings rent was paid and everybody in the neighborhood loved STAR House. They were impressed because they could leave their kids and we’d babysit with them. If they were hungry we fed them. We fed half of the neighborhood because we had an abundance of food the kids liberated. It was a revolutionary thing.
We died in 1973 the fourth anniversary of Stonewall. That’s when we were told we were a threat and an embarrassment to women because lesbians felt offended by our attire and us wearing makeup. It came down to a brutal battle on the stage that year at Washington Square Park between me and people I considered my comrades and friends. We raised a lot of hell back when STAR first started, even if it was just a few of us. We ate and slept demonstrations, planning demonstrations. We’d go from one demo to another the same day. We were doing what we believed in. And what we’re doing now, the few of us who are willing to unsettle people and ruffle feathers, is what we believe in doing. We have to do it because we can no longer stay invisible. We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. We have to show the world that we are numerous. There are many of us out there.
