In 2010 and 2011, I worked with activist minister Megan Rohrer and trans youth organizer Mia Tu Mutch to enlist marginally housed youth in documenting, interpreting, and performing the history of San Francisco’s Tenderloin in relation to their own lives—to position themselves as part of its genealogical lineage and embody its counter-history through the arts and reenactment. The process was aligned with Participatory Action Research, which enables marginalized publics to frame research questions, project design, and interpretation with the goal of generating social change.
Essays and Media Coverage:
Joseph Plaster, “Imagined Conversations and Activist Lineages: Public Histories of Queer Homeless Youth Organizing,” Radical History Review Issue 113, May 2012
Sophia Manolis, “Vanguard Then and Now: An Evolution of Gay Youth Activism in the Tenderloin,” Found SF, 2021
Paul VanDeCarr, “Making History: ‘Vanguard Revisited’ Has a Conversation With the Past,” Inside Stories, Mar. 20, 2011
Matthew S. Bajko, “Political Notebook: Queer Youth Revive 1960s Magazine,” San Francisco Bay Area Reporter, Feb. 3, 2011
Project Components:
Historical Zine Linking Past and Present
We presented issues of Vanguard Magazine (1966-67) to a core group of contemporary homeless youth. They choose an article, poem, or artwork from the original magazines and responded by producing their own cultural production “in conversation” with the chosen document. The new zine we created, Vanguard Revisited (2011), illuminates continuities and discontinuities in the lives of “the kids” over the previous fifty years.
Historical Street Theater Reenactments
The culmination of Vanguard Revisited was a day of direct actions meant to demand housing and employment opportunities for queer youth and to put an end to a “sit/lie” law that criminalized the homeless. Young people reenacted Vanguard’s iconic 1966 street sweep action, pushing large brooms down the streets and chanting, “We won’t be swept off the streets” and “Housing equals safety.”
Vanguard Revisited Special Edition Book
Celebrating the five year anniversary of Vanguard Revisited, this special edition book, edited by Megan Rohrer, includes previously unpublished materials the youth called “Otro Vanguard.”
“In San Francisco, the Vanguard Revisited project is doing some of the most exciting work in community history that I’ve seen in quite some time. Initiated by oral historian and radio producer Joey Plaster, and activist minister Rev. Megan Rohrer, the project ‘resuscitates the history of the 1960s queer youth organization Vanguard and explores the ways in which its history is embodied in the present,’ according to the new project magazine. ”
“Copies of Vanguard Magazine from 1966 through 1969 remain in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society. They had been mostly overlooked, until now. A new project has unearthed this important period of LGBT history, and a group of youth has revived Vanguard. They produced a new version of the publication called Vanguard Revisited that mixes vintage artwork and writings from the 1960s editions with their own contemporary pieces.”
“Vanguard youth of the 1960s swept the streets to say, this is our community. You think it’s disgusting, but this is our home and we value this, and we’re actually going to clean up the filth that’s on the ground, not the filth that are people, because people have value…
We brought that back to life as part of Vanguard Revisited…We marched from the Tenderloin to the Castro, which was promised to be our gay mecca. We swept up the streets as a way to say, this is our community too. We’re going to sweep the streets of the trash, not of the people.”
“To bring back the spirit of Vanguard, homeless queer youth in the Tenderloin recreated Vanguard’s ‘street sweep’ protest and magazine as part of a 2011 project called Vanguard Revisited led by historian Joseph Plaster. Through these actions, these youth continued Vanguard’s legacy of being unapologetically queer and advocating for support of those who are most marginalized within society.”
