My little brother is crazy about McDonald’s, but he only ever eats McChicken sandwiches and french fries. As his older brother, I have the responsibility of heading over to the McDonald’s on 82nd Street to pick some up for him when there’s nothing in the house he wants to eat. It’s not a particularly remarkable McDonald’s, but it’s been there for as long as I can remember. It’s practically iconic of 82nd Street. It’s what made finding out about the assault on March 27th of two transgender women who were verbally abused and physically attacked by a man named Patrick Omeara inside the McDonald’s so surreal. I’d never considered the possibility of a hate crime happening so close to home, but the attack on Nayra and Gabriela had me questioning the moral fabric of my community – until my curiosity lead me to discover Julio Rivera.
Sitting at the intersection of 78th Street and 37th Avenue is a small green direction sign with the words, Julio Rivera Corner. I’d always thought that Julio Rivera was the name of a man who contributed money to the school where the sign sits at. It’s where I’d cut through if I wanted to go to the Little India of Jackson Heights when I had to go through 82nd Street first. It was almost invisible.
The site actually marks the spot where Julio Rivera, an openly gay latino man, was murdered by three skinheads. He’s considered a martyr by many, and is the reason why Council Member Daniel Dromm and hundreds of others were urged and able to push for LGBTQ activist causes including the neighborhood Gay Pride Parade, and the Children of The Rainbow curriculum. There’s a sizable amount of recognition for Julio within the LGBTQ community in the neighborhood; “Julio of Jackson Heights,” for example, is a documentary directed and produced by Richard Shpuntoff about Julio as a person and the effects of his death.
Before it’s possible to contextualize the implications of Julios death in our time, it’s important to establish our grounding in his time first. A New York Times article written by Alessandra Stanley in 1991 titled, “The Symbols Spawned by a Killing,” a year after Julio’s death, was focused on creating a defense for Daniel Doyle, the ringleader of the group that killed him: “Mr. Doyle seemed no more likely a murderer than Mr. Rivera seemed a victim.” Stanley goes on to describe how absurd and improbable it was for Doyle to have committed such a crime. She tries to draw comparisons between Doyle and Rivera, delegitimizing both his murder and his death, while also portraying Rivera as an irrelevant drug user for most of the article, treating him like a character whose death didn’t really matter:
“It was Mr. Rivera, a longtime cocaine user, whom close friends describe as deeply troubled and unhappy. Mr. Doyle did squander his first taste of independence dallying with the neighborhood street gangs his parents had worked hard to raise him above. Yet… there was little in his family life, personality or experiences to suggest he would one day kill a stranger for kicks.”
This segment suddenly brought me back to the present, when I thought about the way Patrick Omeara of the McDonald’s assault was portrayed in mainstream media. There was no defense for him: he was acknowledged to be the hateful man that he is. I also noticed that there was less abrasive language about the victims and their lifestyle, as if it had anything to do with the value of their lives anyway. When it came to Julio, a man who was gay, but also Latino, to delegitimize his life and death was to delegitimize two unique (but not mutually exclusive) groups who saw themselves in Julio.
Julio’s death was shrugged off as a drug related crime until LGBTQ groups pressured the authorities to do their jobs correctly. For months, people fought for some sense of justice in Julio’s death. After all, it could have easily been any one of them: the perpetrators were looking for any homosexuals to hurt; according to the executive director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, Matt Foreman, there was a 129% increase in the number of gay and lesbian bias-related crime between 1989 and 1991. It was finally labeled as gay-bias crime.
The killing spawned the first Queens Gay Pride Parade in 1993. To this day, when they stop at the school where Julio was killed, there is a moment of silence held for him. On June 18, 2017, the Queens Museum held a special 25th Anniversary Celebration in Julio’s honor, that featured documentation and artifacts from the growth of the Parades and of the Lesbian and Gay Committee. Now, organizations like Viva La Comida, Hate Has No Business Here, actively involve members of the community to publicly speak out against hate and promote healthy views of different cultures and lifestyles. Gar bars like Evolution are becoming more and more of a safe haven for Latino homosexual and queer groups.
In a broader sense, the fight for justice after Julio Rivera’s death thirty years ago, was one for identity and against hate. Whether you based it on sexuality, gender or race, the people who were instrumental to bringing Julio’s legacy to life made Jackson Heights an increasingly accepting place where diversity in every sense of the word is valued. By living life in a way that honors the lives of people whose struggle Julio represented, it’s entirely possible to ascend tolerance of others and celebrate them instead, even at a McDonald’s.
Works Cited
Cohen, Jason. “Several Jackson Heights businesses make a stand against hate, join movement” Jackson Heights Post, 6 July, 2017. https://jacksonheightspost.com/jackson-heights-businesses-make-a-stand-against-hate-join-movement. Web.
Gonzalez , David. “Attack in Jackson Heights Leaves Two Transgender Women Living in Fear.” The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2017, p. A21. Print.
Gonzalez, David. “At Site of Gay Man’s Murder, a Street Corner Acknowledges Its Past.” The New York Times, 20 Mar. 2016, p. A19. Print.
“Julio Rivera Corner.” NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/julio-rivera-corner/.
Lorch, Donatella. “An Unlikely Martyr Focuses Gay Anger.” The New York Times, 15 Nov. 1991, p. B00001. Print.
Matua, Angela. “Long Island Man Beats Two Transgender Women Outside of Jackson Heights McDonald’s.” QNS, 20 Mar. 2017, qns.com/story/2017/03/20/long-island-man-beats-two-transgender-women-outside-jackson-heights-mcdonalds/. Web.
Rodriguez , Matthew. “The Queer Havens of Jackson Heights.” The Village Voice, 20 June 2017, www.villagevoice.com/2017/06/20/the-queer-havens-of-jackson-heights/. Web.
Stanley, Alessandra. “The Symbols Spawned by a Killing.” The New York Times, 18 Nov. 1991, p. B00001. Print.
“‘Memory Activism’ Is Inspired by the Belief That Mediating Memories Is a Political Act.” Visual Aids, 9 Apr. 2015, visualaids.org/blog/julio-rivera. Web.
Parry, Bill. “Julio Rivera’s 1990 Murder to Be Remembered in Jackson Heights.” Gay City News, 30 June, 2015. https://www.gaycitynews.nyc/stories/2015/14/w21719-julio_rivera_to_be_remembered-2015-06-30.html. Web.
Wulkan, Hannah. “Man beats transgender women outside of McDonald’s, yells ‘b–ches’ and ‘f-ggots’” Jackson Heights Post, 20 March, 2017. www.jacksonheightspost.com/man-beats-transgender-women-outside-of-mcdonalds-yells-b-ches-and-f-ggots. Web.
