(Maddie Burakoff/Spectrum News 1)Įldon Murray - who would grow to be recognized as a leading activist in the national fight for gay rights - was one of the founders of GPU. The Gay Peoples Union got its start half a century ago as a spinoff of earlier groups at UW-Milwaukee, soon after the Stonewall riots brought national attention to the gay liberation movement.ĭon Schwamb, a GPU member and founder of the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. “It's incredible, the effect GPU had on this city.” “I remember GPU as being the genesis of so much of what we know now,” Schwamb said. From organizing protests and Pride parades to providing health care and putting out a newspaper, the group made its mark far and wide. GPU’s impacts on Milwaukee, as well as the broader gay rights movement, live on 50 years later, Schwamb said. The group became “like a family,” said Michael Lisowski, who served as a former vice president. “It was as if somebody turned on a light in the midst of darkness,” said Miriam Ben-Shalom, a former GPU president. In the midst of a world that didn’t accept LGBTQ+ people, the Gay Peoples Union, which was active in Milwaukee through the 1970s and early ‘80s, showed them that they weren’t alone - and that they even had power. I'm going to risk it,’” Schwamb said.įor Schwamb, like many others who found the nerve to show up to meetings, the decision was life-changing.
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I don't see any rumbles or anything, any fights. “I sat in my car and watched people go in and thought, ‘I don't see any police cars. But back on that day, in the early 1970s, he had to work up his courage to even walk in the door. Today, Schwamb is the founder of the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project and has spent decades advocating for the gay community in Milwaukee.
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MILWAUKEE - It wasn’t easy for Don Schwamb to go to his first Gay Peoples Union meeting.