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London Marks 40 Years Since the Stonewall Riots

Departure

40 people gathered yesterday afternoon (Sunday) outside the London Schools of Economics (where the first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front UK took place in the 1970) for a march marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that took place on 28 June 1969 in New York and are considered as the beginning of the modern gay rights and gay pride movement.

The march which went through Soho (one of London's gay quarters) finished in a club called Central Station (King's Cross area) where a free afternoon of cabaret performances had been organised.

More pictures are available on my flickr account, here. details of the event can be found on this Facebook page.

The picture above was used by Londonist to illustrate their short article about the celebration, here.

I may blog more extensively (and specifically) later about my feeling towards yesterday's event...

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For the Living Left Behind - Frieda Hughes

No one dead who loved you  Would wish your future years dismembered  Against the rocks of their departure.  They would not sentence you to the guilt of betrayal  For any moment they weren’t uppermost in your mind  Nor would they wish you whittled down like a stick  To pick the stony teeth in the open mouth of abject misery,  Daily, until you are nothing left.  No one dead who loved you  Would want your still-breathing carcass  To be lost in the wilderness  That spans the two worlds of the living and the dead,  Where you are neither dead nor living.  They would not applaud your misery,  But would weep to watch their loss  Made pointless by the waste of you.  The dead become a part of us; our skin, our bones, our thinking;  Their existence is continuous in us  And the best we do in everything  As we move on from the moment of their passing.  Step back from the graveside where nothing flower...