STAR House

In 1970, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Bubbles Rose Marie founded the Street

Transcription of the blurry caption:
Sylvia Rivera (center) with other Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R) [From Come Out (No. 7. p. 5)] Photographer Ellen Bedoz. Reprinted by permission from National History Archives of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.
Transvestite Action Revolutionaries—or STAR—in New York City.  Among many things, STAR orchestrated sit-ins and brought together homeless queer youth to support one another and carve out a place to sleep.

The first “STAR house” was a trailer parked in a parking lot in Greenwich Village.  After

having around 20 sleeping trans youth be nearly towed off in that trailer, they decided to settle into some permanent housing in what’s now a demolished tenament—213 Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Of that house, Rivera said:

 

“We fed people and clothed people. We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent. We didn’t want the kids out in the streets hustling. [..] There was always food in the house and everyone had fun. Later we had a chapter in New York, one in Chicago, one in California and England. It lasted for two or three years.”—Sylvia Rivera, interview with trans author and activist Leslie Feinberg, 1998.

 

While STAR house was by no means easy to keep afloat, it was home for many.  

Black and white photograph of four members of the young lords standing in front of a white truck labeled "Chest X-Ray."
Photo of Young Lords with stolen “TB” (tuberculosis) truck which they brought to East Harlem to give people chest x-rays, after the city refused to bring it to that location; 1970.

Notably, during this time Rivera and STAR became part of the Young Lords Party, the radical militant Puerto Rican group which did its own work around getting people of color in NY access to tuberculosis testing, cleaner streets, cleaner water, and much more.  It is imperative to take note of the overlapping interests STAR and the Young Lords had in providing community care through extra-legal means.

Community care work has long been necessary for the survival of oppressed people.