Today, as we mark the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, we are witnessing an attack not only on our rights, but on our history itself. The Trump administration ordered the removal of trans flags and Progress Pride flags from the Stonewall National Monument. References to transgender people were stripped from official government materials about Stonewall. The message is clear: erase trans people from the story, and you make it easier to erase them from the present.

But the people refused. New Yorkers brought their own trans flags and draped them on statues. They wrote affirming messages in chalk and placed stickers around the site. They planted flags through fences and stood guard at the monument with symbols of trans pride. These small acts of defiance matter. They remind us that Stonewall’s legacy was never given by the state. It was claimed by those the state tried to silence.

Stonewall’s power lives in what we choose to remember and what we choose to defend. This year, let our commemoration be more than nostalgia. Let it be a recommitment to the truth and to the lives at the heart of this movement. The question is not whether we will honour Stonewall, but how. Will we allow its history to be rewritten, or will we stand where others stood before us and say: not this time. Not on our watch.