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Zap (action) AI simulator
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Zap (action) AI simulator
(@Zap (action)_simulator)
Zap (action)
A zap is a form of political direct action that came into use in the 1970s in the United States. Popularized by the early gay liberation group Gay Activists Alliance, a zap was a raucous public demonstration designed to embarrass a public figure or celebrity while calling the attention of both gays and straights to issues of gay rights.
Although American homophile organizations had engaged in public demonstrations as early as 1959, these demonstrations tended to be peaceful picket lines. Following the 1969 Stonewall riots, considered the flashpoint of the modern gay liberation movement, younger, more radical gay activists were less interested in the staid tactics of the previous generation. Zaps targeted politicians and other public figures and many addressed the portrayal of gay people in the popular media. LGBT and AIDS activist groups continued to use zap-like tactics into the 1990s and beyond.
Beginning in 1959, and continuing for the next ten years, gay people occasionally demonstrated against discriminatory attitudes toward and treatment of homosexuals. Although these sometimes took the form of sit-ins, and on at least two occasions riots, for the most part these were picket lines. Many of these pickets were organized by Eastern affiliates of such groups as the Mattachine Society chapters out of New York City and Washington, D.C., Philadelphia's Janus Society and the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, These groups acted under the collective name East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). Organized pickets tended to be in large urban population centers because these centers were where the largest concentration of homophile activists were located. Picketers at ECHO-organized events were required to follow strict dress codes. Men had to wear ties, preferably with a jacket. Women were required to wear skirts. The dress code was imposed by Mattachine Society Washington founder Frank Kameny, with the goal of portraying homosexuals as "presentable and 'employable'".
On June 28, 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located in New York City's Greenwich Village, resisted a police raid. Gay people returned to the Stonewall and the surrounding neighborhood for the next several nights for additional confrontations. Although there had been two smaller riots — in Los Angeles in 1959 and San Francisco in 1966 — it is the Stonewall riots that have come to be seen as the flashpoint of a new gay liberation movement.
In the weeks and months following Stonewall, a dramatic increase in gay political organizing took place. Among the many groups that formed was the Gay Activists Alliance, which focused more exclusively on organizing around gay issues and less of the general leftist political perspective taken by such other new groups as the Gay Liberation Front and Red Butterfly. GAA member Marty Robinson is credited with developing the zap following a March 7, 1970, police raid on a gay bar called the Snake Pit. Police arrested 167 patrons. One, an Argentine national named Diego Viñales, so feared the possibility of deportation that he leapt from a second-story window of the police station, impaling himself on the spikes of an iron fence. Gay journalist and activist Arthur Evans later recalled how the raid and Viñales' critical injuries inspired the technique:
The Snake Pit incident truly outraged us, and we put out a leaflet saying that, in effect, regardless of how you looked at it, Diego Viñales was pushed out the window and we were determined to stop it....There was no division for us between the political and personal. We were never given the option to make that division. We lived it. So we decided that people on the other side of the power structure were going to have the same thing happen to them. The wall that they had built protecting themselves from the personal consequences of their political decisions was going to be torn down and politics was going to become personal for them.
Zaps typically included sudden onset against vulnerable targets, noisiness, verbal assaults and media attention. Tactics included sit-ins, disruptive actions and street confrontations.
GAA founding member Arthur Bell explained the philosophy of the zap, which he described as "political theater for educating the gay masses":
Zap (action)
A zap is a form of political direct action that came into use in the 1970s in the United States. Popularized by the early gay liberation group Gay Activists Alliance, a zap was a raucous public demonstration designed to embarrass a public figure or celebrity while calling the attention of both gays and straights to issues of gay rights.
Although American homophile organizations had engaged in public demonstrations as early as 1959, these demonstrations tended to be peaceful picket lines. Following the 1969 Stonewall riots, considered the flashpoint of the modern gay liberation movement, younger, more radical gay activists were less interested in the staid tactics of the previous generation. Zaps targeted politicians and other public figures and many addressed the portrayal of gay people in the popular media. LGBT and AIDS activist groups continued to use zap-like tactics into the 1990s and beyond.
Beginning in 1959, and continuing for the next ten years, gay people occasionally demonstrated against discriminatory attitudes toward and treatment of homosexuals. Although these sometimes took the form of sit-ins, and on at least two occasions riots, for the most part these were picket lines. Many of these pickets were organized by Eastern affiliates of such groups as the Mattachine Society chapters out of New York City and Washington, D.C., Philadelphia's Janus Society and the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, These groups acted under the collective name East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). Organized pickets tended to be in large urban population centers because these centers were where the largest concentration of homophile activists were located. Picketers at ECHO-organized events were required to follow strict dress codes. Men had to wear ties, preferably with a jacket. Women were required to wear skirts. The dress code was imposed by Mattachine Society Washington founder Frank Kameny, with the goal of portraying homosexuals as "presentable and 'employable'".
On June 28, 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located in New York City's Greenwich Village, resisted a police raid. Gay people returned to the Stonewall and the surrounding neighborhood for the next several nights for additional confrontations. Although there had been two smaller riots — in Los Angeles in 1959 and San Francisco in 1966 — it is the Stonewall riots that have come to be seen as the flashpoint of a new gay liberation movement.
In the weeks and months following Stonewall, a dramatic increase in gay political organizing took place. Among the many groups that formed was the Gay Activists Alliance, which focused more exclusively on organizing around gay issues and less of the general leftist political perspective taken by such other new groups as the Gay Liberation Front and Red Butterfly. GAA member Marty Robinson is credited with developing the zap following a March 7, 1970, police raid on a gay bar called the Snake Pit. Police arrested 167 patrons. One, an Argentine national named Diego Viñales, so feared the possibility of deportation that he leapt from a second-story window of the police station, impaling himself on the spikes of an iron fence. Gay journalist and activist Arthur Evans later recalled how the raid and Viñales' critical injuries inspired the technique:
The Snake Pit incident truly outraged us, and we put out a leaflet saying that, in effect, regardless of how you looked at it, Diego Viñales was pushed out the window and we were determined to stop it....There was no division for us between the political and personal. We were never given the option to make that division. We lived it. So we decided that people on the other side of the power structure were going to have the same thing happen to them. The wall that they had built protecting themselves from the personal consequences of their political decisions was going to be torn down and politics was going to become personal for them.
Zaps typically included sudden onset against vulnerable targets, noisiness, verbal assaults and media attention. Tactics included sit-ins, disruptive actions and street confrontations.
GAA founding member Arthur Bell explained the philosophy of the zap, which he described as "political theater for educating the gay masses":