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I do remember their visit, though not a lot else. I got an email from Micky saying you were looking for information about a group of gay men that visited the Louisville Gay Liberation Front group back in 1970. CodaĪn email, from John Fish to Hugh Ryan, dated April 21, 2021 Everywhere, all over the country, in San Francisco, in every fucking town, every city, there was some version of this happening that got lost and didn't get told or is only now being recovered. Whether you’re straight, or not, or mostly, or whatever, having this ability to love and appreciate our fellow humans is what it’s all about. It emboldened me to connect with people who live from the heart and make them my mission. The dreams of the radical Seventies never failed they are simply still unfinished. I think the Gay Liberation Front got us out.
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Richard: Jimmy’s lawyer got us out in three days. And Joel, who had been in jail, and I, who had been in jail, said, "Jim, come over here, sit the fuck down, and stop attracting potentially violent attention!" Giles: Jimmy was prancing around in the holding cell in leather pants with snakeskin boots on, flipping his long blond curls. … I never thought we’d get out of that jail. For a young Black child to have to witness his parents go through the shit that they had to go through just to get to Mississippi. Horrible experience to have to deal with. I don’t like going to the South, because I had done that as a child with my parents and it was horrible. Joel: I thought I was in jail for life because first of all, it was in the South. You were asking about a lesson from all this? Lesson number one was I do not want to go to jail. There must have been like maybe 20 other people in the cell. Richard: We were all held in a jail compound with lots of other people and had to hang through it for three nights. The two rookie cops immediately searched Jimmy and found four tabs of acid in his jacket. Giles: We didn't have any weed on the trip. Living a revolutionary life is always questioning myself and questioning other people We were on for the ride and for the adventure. I don’t remember anything about bringing people to the Panther convention. And Jimmy owned a van, like a VW caravan, and he started talking about this trip. I was also working with this underground printing press, printing stuff for the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, etc. I was Hans, the German, and Thor, the Swede. Because it was “International,” we had different names. We advertised in the Village Voice, $20 a rub. , I had this International Rubdown service. We couldn’t get regular jobs-everybody asked what our draft status was. Richard: I was living with Doug and Joel in a ménage à trois, and that was really wonderful. We would get up there in front of everybody and do the dirty bump as if it was propaganda. And Joel was the greatest dance partner I ever had. Giles: Richard was bar none the best-looking man in Gay Liberation.
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We were full-fledged Gay Liberation and Black Liberation and everything else people. Doug and I were the only two Black men in that collective. Richard, Jimmy, myself, Giles-who else? Doug. There were five of us living in a collective together on the Lower East Side of New York, on 7th Street and Avenue C. Joel: Okay, for my part, this is my story.