- Dr. Gil Horowitz. And I was a witness at Stonewall. Didn't intend to be involved. Had been in Stonewall many times. Saturday night-- it was the third night of five nights. The Stonewall riots took place over a five-night period. I saw up Christopher Street. Watched the police manhandling young people for no reason that I could see. And I was offended and sought to write down the badge number of-- Officer [? Lema ?] was the one that I spotted. And I tried to write down his badge number.

He didn't like that. He was offended now by my writing down his badge number and arrested me on the spot. Hold me into the sixth precinct where I saw young, gay boys chained to the radiators in the sixth precinct being beaten with nightsticks. He said to me, look away. Hard to look away. And they would do me the courtesy of not putting me with the gays-- what was termed by them the queen's tank-- but would put me with a higher class of criminals-- muggers, rapists, arsonists, and other fine people.

I would get deluxe accommodations in the tombs that night. It was not a good night. It was a bad night. And I have a refined understanding of how Stonewall came about, which is often not reported. The homeless kids that lived in the park across the street from the Stonewall Inn played a large part in it. Very often it's depicted that handful of drag queens created the riots. They couldn't have. It weren't enough of them. What could they have really done other than make a lot of noise.

But the homeless kids were numerous. They were let into the club because that was part of the attraction of the club. They had no other place to be. That was their home. They were fed, taken care of, loved after a fashion coming there. Many of them had been thrown out of their homes by their parents because they were gay. And when the police came and said, we're closing your home. They said, fuck no. And they started to pick up garbage cans, bricks, whatever they could get hold of. And then people from the neighborhood came. And they started throwing things. And that's pretty much how it started. It was riot. It was a big riot.