TOW #21 - When We Rise

This past week producer Dustin Lance Black finally released his long-awaited mini-series When We Rise on ABC. The mini-series took Black three years to create because he wanted to make everything was as close to the true story as possible. The series is about the history of the gay rights movement, starting with the famous Stonewall Riots in 1969 that proved that LGBTQ wasn't afraid to fight back. The timeline is shown through four episodes each lasting roughly an hour and a half without commercials. Arguably, the show has three main characters: Cleve Jones, Roma Guy, and Ken Jones. These three people played very important rules regarding LGBTQ rights in San Francisco and later on the rest of the country.

            Black uses retellings of true events to show the newer generation of LGBTQ the struggle and pain that the older generation had to deal with. Being a part of the newer LGBTQ generation, I’ve noticed that a lot of people are ignorant to the stories of the people from past generations, and I’m including myself in this. Much of the newer generation, I believe, either thinks that we as a community always had these rights or that the fight to get these rights wasn’t very hard. And I think Black demonstrates to us, the newer generation, that we didn’t always have these rights and that the fight to get them was difficult, rough, and we basically had all odds against us. As someone who is in the new generation, I have to say that this show taught me about the movement. It showed me the harsh reality that this community faced to make sure that I could hold my significant other’s hand in public proudly and without being persecuted for it.  

            Black also demonstrated to the new generation, that the fight for equality isn’t over. At the very end of the last episode, Black leaves a message that basically states that as the new generation, it’s our turn to keep the fight going, to make sure that everyone who died during the ‘plague’ (AIDs epidemic) is remembered, to make sure that everyone is able to love who they want to without being shamed or persecuted. Black’s main purpose was to call to action the new generation, I can’t tell yet if this has been accomplished since the show was just released but I know that personally for me, I’m ready to keep the movement going.