Fifty years ago this month, a group of people — young and old; men and women; poor and not poor; black, white and Latino; in drag and out — rose up to say ‘No. No More!’ It was a riot. Protesters choked intersections, climbed lamp poles, lit fires and sang in the streets. The immediate cause was the police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City, but the uprising that followed ended up shaking the world — and shaking history.
We live in the wake of that rebellion. Stonewall is still a place — and still a bar. It’s where LGBTQ folks gathered in 2015 to celebrate the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. A year later, it’s where the community met to mourn the shooting at the Pulse nightclub. And today, it’s often the site of demonstrations against the Trump administration’s assaults on LGBTQ people.
But Stonewall is more than just a place. It’s a state of mind, a touchstone, one of many, for LGBTQ people around the world who are in the struggle today — whether that’s in India, where the Supreme Court recently struck down sodomy laws, or in Brazil, where LGBTQ people are under fire from the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro.
On this occasion, HuffPost is proud to present a series of profiles that highlight the next generation of LGBTQ change-makers. Our heroes span the globe—from the U.K. to Korea to Canada and India — and they cut across identities and professions and passions. But each and every one is engaged in the NOW of it. They’re pushing boundaries and raising a fuss. They are Proud Out Loud, and HuffPost is more than proud to celebrate them.