Promote Peace-End Hate Crime

On Halloween night (October 31), 1969, sixty members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) staged a protest at San Francisco's Examiner in response to another in a series of news articles disparaging LGBT people in San Francisco's gay bars and clubs. The peaceful protest against the "homophobic editorial policies" of the Examiner turned tumultuous and were later called "Friday of the Purple Hand". Examiner employees dumped a bag of printers' ink from the third story window of the newspaper building onto the crowd. The protesters used the ink to scrawl "Gay Power" and other slogans on the building walls and to stamp purple hand prints throughout downtown San Francisco resulting in one of the most visible demonstrations of gay power on record. According to Larry LittleJohn, then president of SIR, "At that point, the tactical squad arrived -- not to get the employees who dumped the ink, but to arrest the demonstrators who were the victims. The police came racing in with their clubs swinging, knocking people to the ground. It was unbelievable." The accounts of police brutality include women being thrown to the ground and protesters' teeth being knocked out. While the situation has improved since then the recent political backlash in response to the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act shows just how far we still have to go. It's time to end the violence. Increase the Peace people! How tired are you of all this mess?