Nobody ever asks to be a martyr. But there are times that fates and chance single you out to be one. Such was the case of Julio Rivera who lived in Jackson Heights where in 1990 a most discreet LGBT community lived. It's a lot less discreet now and that is due in many ways to Julio's martyrdom.
Jackson Heights was what many urban historians had in mind when the phrase melting pot was created. Being a cross road of several bus and subway lines a lot of very different kinds of people settled there. They didn't always get along and along around the time of Julio's demise LGBT people were starting to become visible. The telltale sign of that is the gay bar of which there were a few then.
Three skinhead thugs Daniel Doyle, Esat Bici, and Eric Brown decided that with a little bravado that alcohol gives one decided to beat up a gay man. It was Julio that was singled out, beaten and stabbed to death in the wee small hours of July 2, 1990.
As the only openly gay investigator that the New York State Crime Victims Board ever had this was a case I got. Of course an award for funeral expenses was given the Rivera family. That was my small contribution to this tragic story.
My bigger contribution was to my own agency. As is pointed out in the film the police weren't taking this seriously at first. They were giving out that this may have been a drug deal or a trick gone bad and weren't giving it the proper zeal. As you will see it took a lot of lobbying by angry people to get justice done. Someone else would have turned this in with a recommendation that it not be paid up to a certain point. Julio was killed on 7/2/90 and the arrests of Doyle, Bici, and Brown were not made until the fall and then the NYPD said it was homophobic bias for the record.
The case itself is a story, but the focus here is the transformation of the LGBT community in Queens to a more open group, culminating a few years later in the first Queens Gay Pride Parade. Now all the outer boroughs in New York City have them, but Queens was the first outside of Manhattan.
Watching the finished product felt a bit strange. I know so many of the people interviewed. I was interviewed myself, but wound up on the cutting room floor.
Although they are connected mainly through Daniel Dromm former head of the Gay Teachers Group and now City Councilman representing Jackson Heights, the film got into the whole controversy at the time of the Rainbow Curriculum in the public schools. My only criticism of Julio Of Jackson Heights was that the controversy surrounding the Rainbow Curriculum deserved a film of its own. I'd forgotten how contentious that whole business was.
Now that I live in Buffalo where we are with relations with law enforcement is just about the same place that Queens was before the Rivera homicide. The LGBT community in many areas including Western New York could learn a great lesson in community activism from what came from this tragedy as Julio Of Jackson Heights illustrates.
Jackson Heights was what many urban historians had in mind when the phrase melting pot was created. Being a cross road of several bus and subway lines a lot of very different kinds of people settled there. They didn't always get along and along around the time of Julio's demise LGBT people were starting to become visible. The telltale sign of that is the gay bar of which there were a few then.
Three skinhead thugs Daniel Doyle, Esat Bici, and Eric Brown decided that with a little bravado that alcohol gives one decided to beat up a gay man. It was Julio that was singled out, beaten and stabbed to death in the wee small hours of July 2, 1990.
As the only openly gay investigator that the New York State Crime Victims Board ever had this was a case I got. Of course an award for funeral expenses was given the Rivera family. That was my small contribution to this tragic story.
My bigger contribution was to my own agency. As is pointed out in the film the police weren't taking this seriously at first. They were giving out that this may have been a drug deal or a trick gone bad and weren't giving it the proper zeal. As you will see it took a lot of lobbying by angry people to get justice done. Someone else would have turned this in with a recommendation that it not be paid up to a certain point. Julio was killed on 7/2/90 and the arrests of Doyle, Bici, and Brown were not made until the fall and then the NYPD said it was homophobic bias for the record.
The case itself is a story, but the focus here is the transformation of the LGBT community in Queens to a more open group, culminating a few years later in the first Queens Gay Pride Parade. Now all the outer boroughs in New York City have them, but Queens was the first outside of Manhattan.
Watching the finished product felt a bit strange. I know so many of the people interviewed. I was interviewed myself, but wound up on the cutting room floor.
Although they are connected mainly through Daniel Dromm former head of the Gay Teachers Group and now City Councilman representing Jackson Heights, the film got into the whole controversy at the time of the Rainbow Curriculum in the public schools. My only criticism of Julio Of Jackson Heights was that the controversy surrounding the Rainbow Curriculum deserved a film of its own. I'd forgotten how contentious that whole business was.
Now that I live in Buffalo where we are with relations with law enforcement is just about the same place that Queens was before the Rivera homicide. The LGBT community in many areas including Western New York could learn a great lesson in community activism from what came from this tragedy as Julio Of Jackson Heights illustrates.
