Revisiting the STAR Manifesto
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera joined with Black and brown trans and queer folks in New York in the 1970s to create the Street Trans Action Revolutionaries.
STAR was a collective that provided housing and resources for trans and queer young people and advocated for self-determination and free housing, food, education, health care, and more, particularly for TLGBQIA+ people who are poor or incarcerated. They rallied against state violence, criminalization, incarceration, and capitalism.
STAR staged sit-ins and occupations, they provided mutual aid, and they published an incredible manifesto that still rings true fifty years later.
You can see the full text of the STAR manifesto below. Please note that some of the language used in the manifesto is outdated today.
The Street Trans Action Revolutionaries Manifesto
The oppression against trans people* of either sex arises from sexist values and this oppression is manifested by heterosexuals and homosexuals of both sexes in the form of exploitation, ridicule, harassment, beatings, rapes, murders.
Because of this oppression the majority of trans people* are forced into the street and we have formed a strong alliance with our gay sisters and brothers of the street. Who we are a part of and represent we are; a part of the REVOLUTIONARIES armies fighting against the system.
We want the right to self-determination over the use of our bodies; the right to be gay, anytime, anyplace; the right to free physiological change and modification of sex on demand; the right to free dress and adornment.
The end to all job discrimination against trans people* of both sexes and gay street people because of attire.
The immediate end of all police harassment and arrest of trans people* and gay street people, and the release of transvestites and gay street people from all prisons and all other political prisoners.
The end to all exploitive practices of doctors and psychiatrists who work in the field of transvestism.
Trans people* who live as members of the opposite gender should be able to obtain identification of the opposite gender.
Trans people* and gay street people and all oppressed people should have free education, health care, clothing, food, transportation, and housing.
Trans people* and gay street people should be granted full and equal rights on all levels of society, and full voice in the struggle for liberation of all oppressed people.
An end to exploitation and discrimination against trans people* within the homosexual world.
We want a revolutionary peoples’ government, where trans people*, street people, women, homosexuals, puerto ricans, indians, and all oppressed people are free, and not fucked over by this government who treat us like the scum of the earth and kills us off like flies, one by one, and throws us into jail to rot. This government who spends millions of dollars to go to the moon, and lets the poor Americans starve to death.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
S. T. A. R.
The Street Trans Action Revolutionaries are among the many Black theorists and organizers who the DC Survivor Support Team is learning from.
The survivors in the DC Survivor Support Team are Black trans women who want housing, food, health care, education, and agency for themselves and all Black marginalized people across the world. Fighting for this takes so much bravery, especially when going through abuse from the state or the state’s agents like exploitative and abusive employers, landlords/housing providers, doctors, or partners.
It’s devastating that we are still dealing with the oppression that generations before us had to suffer through. But we are encouraged that our ancestors have provided us with so many roadmaps to learn from and build off of.
Because of this, we are more sure than ever that safety, freedom and self-determination are in our future. It’s gotta be.
— the DC Survivor Support Team