We Are Everywhere!. United States, ca. 1979. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017647472/. (First thumbnail, bottom left in Resource Guide https://guides.loc.gov/lgbtq-studies/.)
The poster’s slogan prominently features the use of “we” and the symbol for women. According to the National Park Service’s page on the 1979 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, participants along the route chanted, “We are everywhere!” and one participant, Beverly Brubaker of Ohio, recalled, “I knew we were not alone, but that was the first time I felt it to the very core of my being!” This poster, with its simple design and slogan, not only represented a unified national movement for LGBTQIA+ rights but also, as the author notes, “reaffirmed that gays and lesbians were, indeed, ‘everywhere.’” The march’s success provides a valuable lesson for students about the power of collective action, speaking truth to power, and finding solidarity and empowerment within a like-minded community. Furthermore, this poster stands as a historical artifact of the LGBTQIA+ rights movement, marking a new beginning to a national movement in United States history.
This photograph depicts a poster advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights, specifically the right of all lesbians and women to exist. The poster features a map outlining the United States, covered in the women’s symbol in pink, set against a red background. The slogan “We Are Everywhere!” is prominently displayed in bold black letters above the map, which is encircled by a black line.
This photograph of a poster is from 1979, the year in which the first march for gay and lesbian rights took place in Washington, DC, following the murder of Harvey Milk, an openly gay elected official in San Francisco. The Library of Congress notes that this photograph was donated by Gary Yanker, “a collector of political and social propaganda posters.” The Library explains that a “majority of the posters were published in the 1960's and 1970's, a time of great upheaval in world politics and society,” and “many of the views expressed on these posters were considered radical at the time.”
- What constitutes an effective protest?
- What are the characteristics of an effective slogan or chant, both for those protesting as well as the intended audience of a protest?
- In what ways is the slogan “We are everywhere!” still relevant for LGBTQIA+ people and women in the United States today?
- What is a community that you are a part of, and how do you know that you belong to it?
- How do you demonstrate pride in lesser-known or underrecognized aspects of your own identity, and how did you develop a sense of pride?
- How do you show solidarity with others on issues you care about?
NCTE Standards
NCTE.3: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
- Students will use critical thinking to make informed inferences about the poster, as well as the context that led to the creation of the poster.
NCTE.7: Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
- Students will synthesize their findings and pose questions both about the poster, as well as about the march and related social justice movements.
- At the start of a unit or lesson, educators can share the poster with the class and ask questions such as What do you think the intended goal of this poster is? to help students decode its potential meaning and develop questions about its context. Using a historical perspective, educators can then introduce the poster as part of a timeline marking the evolution of LGBTQIA+ rights on a national level in the United States. Timelines, such as this one compiled and updated by CNN, can be used alongside the introduction of key figures in the LGBTQIA+ movement, such as Harvey Milk.
- By incorporating texts like The Queer History of the United States for Young People by Michael Bronski, students can research and present on key individuals who drove change for the LGBTQIA+ community. This approach also allows students to identify parallels between the Black Freedom Struggle and the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights, highlighting figures who advocated for individuals who were both BIPOC and queer.
- The poster can also be introduced as part of a larger unit on what constitutes an effective protest or how communities collaborate within long-standing social justice movements. As part of a unit on effective protests, educators can utilize the Learning for Justice Civil Rights framework found here. Alternatively, a standalone lesson could focus on analyzing protest posters, where students create their own protest slogans for causes they care about.
- This poster highlights the existence of LGBTQIA+ individuals, specifically women and lesbians, which may present challenges in some contexts. These challenges could arise from fears of inspiring young adults to speak out against authority figures or from biases rooted in homophobia, sexism, or a combination of the two.
Links to resources for approaching those topics
- To address these concerns in the classroom, educators can incorporate texts such as Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” These works encourage students to use critical thinking and their own sense of morality to evaluate when and how to advocate for the issues they care most about.
- Additionally, to combat homophobia, educators can utilize the lessons and activities available in the Safe at School To address sexism, or the intersection of sexism and homophobia, resources from The Representation Project can be incorporated to help students unpack and challenge gender stereotypes of all kinds.
- This was a time of unrest for Middle Eastern students as well, and this link will take you to a photograph of a similar march on Washington in 1970.
- There were considerable efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington, and in 1969 there were marches to see that it would happen.
- Bronski, Michael, and Richie Chevat. A Queer History of the United States for Young People. Beacon Press, 2019.
- Educators may choose to use this young adult version of Bronski’s original text in order to provide individuals and collectives that worked together to fight for queer liberation.
- Riemer, Matthew, and Leighton Brown. We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation. Ten Speed Press, 2019.
- Educators may choose to include this more recent text, as it incorporates both the protest slogan in its title as well as more history of the Queer Liberation movement for students to explore.