Victoria Cruz, a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising and unwavering advocate for survivors of violence, died on June 25 from liver cancer. Fierce, generous, and unyielding, Cruz emerged from Stonewall as a witness to history who would spend more than five decades helping to shape it. She became a fixture of New York LGBTQ+ activism and in time, one of the community’s most beloved elders and mentors.

One of 11 children, Cruz arrived with her family in Red Hook, Brooklyn from Guánica, Puerto Rico as a young child. She occasionally quipped that she was “never in the closet” but “in the armoire,” and knew from an early age that she was a girl at a time when there was little language to describe her experience. She studied cosmetology and hairdressing at Metropolitan Vocational High School, before attending Brooklyn College where she earned a theater degree in 1982. She supported herself through beauty work, as a stripper, sex worker, and entertainer in the New York City nightlife scene, giving her first drag performance at the Grapevine in 1973 to a Billie Holiday song.

A regular at the Stonewall Inn, Cruz often arrived in what she described as “full drag and semi-drag.” In a 2025 interview she recounted details of the gay bar on Christopher Street – the lack of plumbing, except for the bathroom, and how she would only drink beer because the ice for mixed drinks was drawn from unsanitary garbage cans where glasses were rinsed.

 “[The cops] used to come in and raid the place, and put the lights on. If you were two men together, you’d look for a lesbian to sit with or talk to.” If you had make-up on, she said, they’d make you wash it off with dirty water from the mop bucket. Officers also did what she called “the Robin Hood.” 

“They used to take the bra straps in the back and pull them, you know, they were very heavy elastic, and let it go so it’ll hurt their back.”

Harassment was routine. But the night of Friday, June 27, 1969, was different. Maybe the cops weren’t given “the little brown bag pay off” or “enough money,” she speculated.

Cruz hadn’t planned to go that night. She had work the next day at a beauty parlor but her boyfriend, Frankie, was a bouncer at Stonewall — and “a cheat.”

“I went and stalked him.” When he asked her to go home, she said, “‘No, I’m going to wait up here, because tonight you’re going home with me.'”

It was close to midnight, and the air was hot and humid, she recalled. A full moon in the sky. Judy Garland had just been buried, and the atmosphere in the Village was solemn – “like the calm before the storm.”  Standing near the steps next to the Stonewall, Cruz spotted Sylvia Rivera—who would also become a prominent trans rights figure—with her friends across the street by Sheridan Square Park.

The paddy wagons came. The bar got raided, yet again. But this time, a rebellion began to simmer.

“And then the crowd started getting a little bit rowdier outside, they started throwing pennies,” Cruz recalled. “They were calling them names, you know, ‘dirty copper.’ ” As cops started loading people into the paddy wagons, she “saw one queen got punched.” She thought it was Miss Major, who later publicly recounted taking a blow to the head and getting knocked unconscious.

Police brought a paddy wagon around and went back inside the bar. “And here comes a brick out of Sheridan Square Park, and it cracked the window, and they closed all the doors as a barricade. We were hearing noise from inside.”

Frankie came out to see whether she was still there. A Canadian in the country illegally, he wanted to leave. Cruz wanted to stay. “That’s serious when they started burning stuff – and then Frankie says, let’s get out of here.” She recalled the violence escalating. “First it was garbage pails. Then they started setting up fire on cars. And I said, no, no, no. That’s too crazy.”

After the raid, Frankie’s boss called him in “to clean out the basement and try to straighten up whatever the cops smashed up over there.” Frankie found one of three drink-price signs, and downstairs, the dog, Rusty, who guarded the liquor (“even though the liquor was watered down”). One of the owners let Frankie take him home. “I was so afraid of dogs, but I gave him food, and then he became my best friend and my protector.”

As for the sign, she kept it in her possession and shared that she hoped to return it to Stonewall along with photos of Frankie and Rusty. “They are part of our original history and they belong there.”

Those nights of chaos and violence are now widely regarded as the birth of the modern gay rights movement. One year later, Cruz joined thousands in what she called “the big first gay pride liberation march.”

“She was definitely one of our mothers in the movement,” says Shelby Chestnut, now executive director of Transgender Law Center, who worked with “Miss Vicky” at the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) from 2010 to 2017. Cruz first came to AVP seeking support after being sexually assaulted by members of the nursing staff while working at Cobble Hill Health Center. She later volunteered at AVP and remained with the organization for 18 years, eventually coordinating the domestic violence project and serving as a senior counselor advocate.

Shay Huffman, a school social worker and former AVP Board Member, credits Cruz with being her lifeline while going through intimate partner violence. “By the time I got to AVP, I was 95 pounds,” says Huffman. “I seriously doubted I would survive. I had lost my appetite, wasn’t eating, and felt like my spirit was being sucked out of me.” Huffman says it was important to her that Cruz was a woman of color. “She heard me. She met me where I was. She validated me. She gave me hope and encouragement. She made me believe, ‘Maybe I can survive this.’ It was the first step from becoming a fighter and survivor to really thriving.”

Cruz’s impact extended beyond those she counseled. For many young trans people, the presence of an elder figure like “Miss Vicky” was not something to be taken lightly, Shelby Chestnut says.

“Especially at the time when she got into advocacy, in an ‘official’ way, there was a real expansion of trans justice organizations in New York City, and she would come to all of the events and be this big voice of reason. Even in the face of so much terribleness in the world right now—even at almost 80 years old—she was so clear and articulate: ‘We can’t back down. We’ve been here before. We can’t give people new ground in this moment to take our power and livelihood away.’ She imparted this to a new generation of organizers and leaders in a way that not many people could.”

“She came up in a post-Stonewall reality but also was clear that so much of our conditions didn’t change just because Stonewall birthed our movement.”

Her commitment to justice came to wider public attention with the release of the 2017 documentary “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson.” The film documents her meticulous investigation into the 1992 death of her contemporary, Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman whose death was ruled a suicide despite suspicious circumstances. Cruz’s probing not only helped expose the very real possibility that Johnson was murdered, but also underscored a broader reality: Many trans women of the era were treated as throwaways, their deaths denied the attention and justice they deserved. 

Following Cruz’s death, the documentary’s director, David France, paid tribute to Cruz on Facebook: 

“Throughout her life she embodied pure joy, something she learned from Marsha P. Johnson (whom she called “The Rosa Parks of the gay movement”), and fierce resistance, which she dedicated herself to in her last conversation with Sylvia Rivera on her death bed. She promised Sylvia she would ‘keep the community together.’  And she did that and more. She died on Pride Week, her highest of holy days. There never will be another like her.”

“Victoria loved the beach,” recalls Cruz’s sister, Heyde Cruz, 73. “She called it her sanctuary and as my children and my other siblings’ children were growing, she would take them to the beach and show them how beautiful it was, picking up seashells and other beach objects on the sand and they loved it.”

 Indeed, Cruz was a popular presence at the People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park in Queens, where she was often spotted beneath a sun tent in colorful attire and her signature headband with feathers and cowrie shells. She was considered royalty at this haven for queers near the former Neponsit Hospital — a building that fell into ruin over decades before ultimately being demolished, despite protests by a community that had laid claim to a landmark no one else seemed to want.

In a 2023 conversation, the “Queen of Riis” recounted tales of noble mischief dating back to the earliest days when she had first set foot on the sands in 1963. The facility had been running as a “Home for the Aged” and the gay folks delighted in helping elderly residents sneak out to frolic on the beach.

 “We would tell them when the guys were coming so they could run back to the premises,” she said. She loved hearing the concerts from the facility’s gazebo, where patients would be taken out for lunch. “I loved to go on Sunday mornings because of the church services,” Cruz said. “They played the most wonderful American gospel I ever heard.”

Cruz had hoped that the building might be preserved and turned into a hospice, where “the sounds of the sea, the sun, the gulls [might] make them enjoy life more, especially in their last days.” 

Last December, The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative (SIGBI) honored Cruz with a Brick Award for Community Activism. Latina actor, model and trans activist Angelica Christina introduced Cruz, highlighting the elder’s fight for the LGBTQ+ community as “front and center,” noting she had “done so with courage, conviction and compassion.”

“From being a longtime leader at the Anti-Violence Project, to being a part of the documented history at Stonewall, Victoria has supported survivors of anti-LGBTQIA+ violence when few others would,” said Christina, herself a survivor of sexual assault and homelessness. “She fought for safety and accountability and dignity at a time when our stories – especially that of BIPOC trans women – were too often ignored… “

To a standing ovation, Cruz spoke to those who have long admired her spirit, as well as a new generation reaching for the torch amid a renewed political tempest intent on extinguishing the most marginalized:

“We resisted at Stonewall and we can resist now because they’re not going to erase us,” Cruz assured. “Today, it is better to be yourself. Life is much easier when you are you.” 

“And I thank you for this prize, because like Sylvia [Rivera] said – and I promised her – that wherever I would go, I will try to keep the community together because we do have the numbers, and with our allies, we can defeat them anytime… 

“We’re here from the beginning and we’re going to be here ’til the end.”

Attorneys for gay former FBI employee David Maltinsky, who was fired from his job as a non-agent employee at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office in October 2025 after more than 16 years of service for displaying an LGBTQ Pride flag at his workstation, filed court papers on July 15 opposing a motion by government attorneys to dismiss some but not all of the provisions in his unlawful discrimination lawsuit seeking to overturn the firing.

Maltinsky’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in D.C. on Nov. 19, 2025, states that FBI Director Kash Patel acted illegally by violating Maltinsky’s First Amendment constitutional rights and the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 by ordering his firing on grounds that he “exercised poor judgement with an inappropriate display of political signage” by displaying the Pride flag.

The firing came at a time when Maltinsky successfully completed 16 weeks of the FBI’s 19-week training program at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Va. to become an FBI Special Agent, according to the lawsuit.

In addition to Patel, who took office as FBI director in February 2025 under the Trump administration, the lawsuit names as defendants the FBI itself, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI.

“Defendants discriminated against Maltinsky for engaging in protected speech, for his sexual orientation, and for opposing discrimination – a clear and brazen violation of federal law and the Constitution,” the lawsuit states in an amended complaint filed May 5, 2026.

The Department of Justice, which is representing the FBI in its response to the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request from the Washington Blade for comment on the lawsuit and why it is seeking dismissal of some but not all of the lawsuit’s multiple allegations, including its claim that the firing violated Maltinsky’s First Amendment rights.

In its “Partial” motion filed on June 15, 2026, to dismiss some provisions in the lawsuit, the Justice Department through Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate and Associate Branch Director Christopher Hall, stated that the lawsuit fails to provide sufficient evidence that Maltinsky was fired because he is gay.    

“The Amended Complaint contains no factual allegations that Director Patel or any other decisionmaker expressed hostility toward gay employees, relied on Plaintiff’s sexual orientation in making employment decisions, even knew Plaintiff’s sexual orientation or otherwise indicated that Plaintiff’s status as a gay man played any role in the challenged actions,” the motion states.

Based on that, among other things, the motion says the lawsuit’s claim that the firing violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be dismissed. A 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that the 1964 law bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity along with its other categories including race, religion, and gender.  

In its arguments that the decision to fire Maltinsky was illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust, the lawsuit’s amended complaint points out that FBI officials at the Los Angeles Field Office where Maltinsky worked presented the Pride flag to him and gave him full permission to display it at his workstation.  

“The FBI encouraged and honored Maltinsky’s work by awarding him the 2020 Director’s Award For Excellence-Outstanding Service in Diversity and Inclusion,” the lawsuit says. “In 2022, the Attorney General for the Department of Justice awarded Maltinsky the Attorney General’s Award for Equal Employment Opportunity, DOJ’s highest award for performance in support of the Equal Employment Program,” it says.

“In special recognition of Maltinsky’s efforts to improve the FBI, in June 2021 LAFO [Los Angeles Field Office] leadership entrusted to Maltinsky two Pride flags that had been flown from the flagpole located in front of the LAFO,” the lawsuit complaint continues. “Maltinsky displayed one of those flags at his workstation.”

Although the lawsuit doesn’t say so directly, all of that happened during the administration of President Joe Biden and previous FBI Director Christopher Wray, who held the director’s position from August 2017 to January 2025, when Donald Trump took office as president.

Nathaniel Zelinsky, one of the attorneys representing Maltinsky regarding the lawsuit, told the Blade that because the Justice Department did not contest the lawsuit’s First Amendment provisions, the case will move forward to the discovery stage, in which he and fellow attorneys can seek and obtain government documents, and most likely go to trial. He said that regardless of whether the judge approves the dismissal of the lawsuit provisions the government has asked for, the other provisions and the case as a whole  will continue.

“And those First Amendment claims are extremely serious,” he said. “The government, by its admission, fired David Maltinsky because they did not like the speech he displayed when he put up the Pride flag that was gifted to him by the FBI,” Zelinsky said. “The federal government cannot discriminate against its workers based on their speech.”      

An officer-involved shooting outside of a gay dive bar, Shakey’s, in downtown Asheville, N.C., left one man dead Wednesday.

The bar released a statement the following morning regarding the incident, stating that bar staff had asked a patron to leave earlier in the night citing concerning behavior. The bar said that later the man was spotted with a gun in the parking lot.

The bar proceeded to call 911, locked the doors to the establishment, and followed dispatcher instructions on how to keep patrons of the bar safe while officers arrived. These protocols included getting patrons away from the windows and staying low to the ground.

According to Shakey’s, shots were fired outside of the business. When the Asheville Police Department officers arrived, they fired back. The individual died from their injuries, according to the police.

“Because of everyone’s quick actions, cooperation, and concern for one another, every customer and every employee inside Shakey’s made it home safely. We are incredibly thankful,” Shakey’s said on their Instagram page. They thanked Asheville police, emergency dispatchers, EMS, and all first responders who were on scene.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Chad Flowers, stated that the suspect involved in the shooting was Arturo Castillo Palomar.

The Washington Blade reached out to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation for a comment regarding the possibility of the event being considered a hate crime. They said the issue is currently under investigation and that the findings would be turned over to the district attorney for review.