On the very early hours of 28 June 1969, a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-controlled gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City. By 2.00am, a raucous crowd of patrons and police were clashing in the middle of the street, a fire had broken out and multiple police, patrons (and a Village Voice reporter) were barricaded inside of the bar.

Before the raid, conditions at the bar weren’t particularly great: there was no fire escape, no running water behind the bar to clean glasses and the toilets were frequently clogged and overflowing. But on this fateful night, the NYPD, entering the bar and arresting 13 of its employees and patrons, attempted to take the one thing from this community that they so desperately needed: a physical space that was their own. A place where the diverse crowd of gay men, lesbians, trans people, gender non-conformists and homeless teens could come and not feel the constant threat of violence, death.

“This was our street,” said Mr Mark Segal, a Stonewall witness and founder of Gay Liberation Front, recounting the event for NBC News. “This was our home. Our only home. And we told the police it’s now ours.”

In the coming years, we can expect to start making sense of the world post-Covid, with all of its inequalities laid bare. In that context, I can’t help but feel that, despite the legalisation of same-gender marriage in many countries and more “representation” across all media, the LGBTQIA+ community is still fighting for the same thing: physical spaces to connect, places where every member of the community can go and, at the very least, not fear for their lives.

Hearing my elders speak of the places that helped them grow, the spaces they fought for – and, in many cases, lost – the spaces that LGBTQIA+ people across the world will never get to experience, I wonder: how much progress have we really made?

As we survey the current social and political landscapes for LGBTQIA+ people, it comes into clear focus that our fights for representation and gay marriage have been replaced by even more basic fights: for those of queer and trans people to simply exist, use the restroom and get medical care. Globally, from Nigeria to Chechnya, governments have decided to “crackdown” on any type of gathering of LGBTQIA+ people, imprisoning dozens of people. For all of our joy, there are still members of the global community of queer people who are engaged in daily fights for their lives.

Despite the fact that there had been small bits of unrest across at gay and lesbian bars across the US in the years prior to Stonewall, the ethos of that evening – that safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ people were worth fighting, and possibly dying for – has resonated around the world since. Major queer advocacy organisations across the world, from the UK to South Africa, have named themselves after Stonewall, for example, and across the rest of Europe, people celebrate “Christopher Street Day”, named for the street on which Stonewall sits.

It’s hard to compare the struggles of today’s LGBTQIA+ community with those of our forebears from 53 years ago, but looking at our current landscape, the core lessons from that time bear repeating. One night, in a bar, an unlikely group of gay folks – people of colour, homeless teens, drag queens, sure, but also white college kids, young gay men who spent their days on Wall Street and Madison Avenue – were suddenly forced to put their skin on the line, to fight for their basic rights to drink, dance and commune safely.

We’re approaching another year of record-breaking violence against trans people globally. Queer and trans youth around the world, despite our progress, still report concerning levels of fear, isolation and depression. But I have faith that our community, more diverse, open and freer than ever, will continue to fight. And win. We always have.