"We fed people and clothed people," Rivera explained in a 1998 interview. "We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent." The work was of course treacherous, as Marsha P Johnson, proudly brandishing a can of Mace, once said: "It's very dangerous being a transvestite going out on dates because it's so easy to get killed." She and her sisters had to protect themselves and each other, because they knew no one else would...Johnson and her comrades innately understood the intersectional nature of their struggle, even if those who should have been their natural allies did not. Sex workers like them provided crucial material and organizational support to the early trans rights movement as well as the broader gay liberation movement, yet due to the stigma attached to their labor, even the most pivotal activists were scrubbed from the narrative. In 1973, only a few years after the Stonewall uprising, Rivera was excluded from the speakers' list at a gay pride rally organized to celebrate its anniversary because the crowd was uncomfortable with her profession. Furious, Rivera got onstage anyway and castigated the crowd for abandoning their queer sex worker brothers and sisters who had been arrested and jailed for their means of survival. "I will not put up with this shit," she shouted. "The people are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a middle-class white club. And that's what you all belong to!"