“I was passing by and I saw what was going down,” he said in an interview, “and I figured, they can’t have a riot without me!” Van Ronk was not gay, but he had firsthand experience with police violence, both at the Beatnik Riot in Washington Square Park in 1961, as well as at many antiwar demonstrations. “As far as I was concerned,” he said, “anybody who’d stand against the cops was all right with me, and that’s why I stayed in…Every time you turn around the cops were pulling some outrage or another.”
Absolutely based
“I was passing by and I saw what was going down,” he said in an interview, “and I figured, they can’t have a riot without me!” Van Ronk was not gay, but he had firsthand experience with police violence, both at the Beatnik Riot in Washington Square Park in 1961, as well as at many antiwar demonstrations. “As far as I was concerned,” he said, “anybody who’d stand against the cops was all right with me, and that’s why I stayed in…Every time you turn around the cops were pulling some outrage or another.”
https://www.villagepreservation.org/2022/06/13/dave-van-ronk-ally-at-the-stonewall-uprising/