Lantern Against the Storm
Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s Defiance, Dissent, and the Art of Radical Peace
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.” – Kiyoshi Kuromiya
Good morning, my radiant rebels—
Whether this is your first time at our table or you are an old friend, we are glad you have found your way—especially in a time such as this. The sky holds that quiet tension again, the kind that comes before the storm. You feel it in your bones before it makes the papers: the language of escalation, of “necessary evil,” of justified force. Tensions rise with Iran. Meetings behind closed doors. Troop movements whispered across ocean floors. War, once again, tugs at the hem of the flag.
It’s moments like these when I return to the archives of our people—to the ones who knew what it meant to resist not with bullets or bombs, but with boldness. Who showed the world that peace is not silence—it is a practice. A protest. A promise.
So let me tell you a story. Of a boy born in a prison, who grew into a man with a lantern in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. His name was Kiyoshi Kuromiya, and he refused to let the world define him by its fear.
Born Into the Barbed Wire
Kiyoshi’s first breath came behind barbed wire, born in 1943 at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, one of the concentration camps America built for its own citizens—Japanese Americans deemed suspicious for the shape of their eyes and the names on their birth certificates. His family had done nothing wrong. They should have been protected by our Constitution. Yet fear said we didn’t have time for due process. The country was at war, and fear has never needed proof.
From the beginning, Kiyoshi learned that power could be cruel, arbitrary, and masked in patriotism. But he also learned how to survive it.
At just eight or nine years old, he realized he was gay. He told his parents. He told himself. And eventually, he would tell the world. In a time when queerness was criminalized, when same-sex behavior could land you in juvenile detention—as it did him—he chose to speak anyway.
As a teen, Kiyoshi was arrested multiple times for “loitering” in a park near his school. In reality, he was arrested not because of what he was doing, but because of who he was with—other young men showing affection. According to an interview he gave near the end of his life:
“…the judge or whatever he was told me and my parents that I was in danger of leading a lewd and immoral life.”
Yet I would be willing to bet the judge who said it—as well as every lawyer in that courtroom—had once been “parking” with a high school sweetheart. The shame he felt in that moment—that he fought to overcome—he would spend a lifetime working to ensure no one else would have to experience. One can only wonder if his time in youth prisons gave him a strange sense of peace with it all, as his later activism speaks of a man with no fear of having his body imprisoned if it meant others’ souls might live free.
The Making of a Protester
He left California for the “City of Brotherly Love” in 1961, partially drawn by the name, enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania. But books would not be the only thing that shaped him.
Kiyoshi became an activist almost immediately. He sat in with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in a series of diner sit-ins in Maryland. He walked the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington, after which he met Rev. Ralph Abernathy, James Baldwin, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would become both mentor and guide.
When the call came from Selma, 1965, Kiyoshi answered. He led a group of activists who took over Independence Hall in Philadelphia in solidarity with those attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Afterwards, he flew south to join Dr. King. He was attacked by police alongside Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Joe Forman, while helping students march to Montgomery to register to vote. The wounds he received required hospitalization and 20 stitches in his head. The next day, undaunted, he stood face to face with the presiding sheriff along the police cordon—with King, John Lewis, Forman, and Abernathy at his side. King marked it as the first time a Southern sheriff had ever issued an apology to a civil rights worker.
Returning from the South, he did not retreat. He expanded. Continuing to fight for justice, and forming a lasting friendship with Dr. King. Following King’s death, Kiyoshi quietly helped care for the King children in Atlanta during the funeral week—tending to the next generation of justice.
Against the Machine
As the Vietnam War escalated, Kiyoshi became one of its most vivid and haunting critics. At Penn, he staged a protest no one could forget: he announced that a dog would be napalmed on campus. Thousands arrived in horror to protest. When they arrived, instead of fire, he handed them fliers.
“Congratulations. You’ve saved the life of an innocent dog. Now about the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese burned alive… What are you going to do about it?”
It was printed on his home press and hand-distributed to the masses. It was the kind of protest that didn’t need volume to be heard. That was Kiyoshi’s genius: he knew how to show protest in a way that connected, not just shout.
He joined the famed 1967 levitation of the Pentagon with Abbie Hoffman and others, using absurdist theater to question the absurdity of war. But even then, Kiyoshi’s compass pointed to truth—not performance. He did not need to be the loudest in the room. He only needed to be clear.
And he was always clear.
A Banner and a Rainbow
When the Stonewall uprising sparked a fire in the hearts of queer Americans, Kiyoshi answered the call again. He helped found the Gay Liberation Front–Philadelphia, standing boldly in a time when being openly gay could cost you your job, your home, your life.
Remember Barbara Gittings and her friend Frank? Kiyoshi was right there with them, coming out on July 4th, 1965 at the first Annual Reminder on the steps of Independence Hall. Dressed every man dressed in a coat and tie despite the heat, showing they were not hoodlums or monsters —but people.
GLF—Gay Liberation Front—was seen as one of the more radical groups to emerge from Stonewall. Kiyoshi’s Philadelphia chapter led peaceful can-can dance lines in front of police armed with tear gas and police batons. Writing in the Free Press, Kiyoshi said:
“Homosexuals have burst their chains and abandoned their closets. We came battle-scarred and angry to topple your sexist, racist, hateful society. We came to challenge the incredible hypocrisy of your serial monogamy, your oppressive sexual role-playing, your nuclear family, your Protestant ethic, apple pie, and Mother.”
GLF was considered radical not just for it positions, but for whom it sought to include—building alliances with the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and others. In 1970, Kiyoshi attended the Black Panther Party’s Constitutional Convention as an openly gay delegate. Few would’ve dared. But he understood something vital—something many still struggle to grasp today: liberation is not a buffet. You do not pick and choose whose rights matter.
Truth in a Time of Plague
When the world turned its back on those dying of AIDS, Kiyoshi yet again answered the call, refusing to look away from his community who was dying all around him.
Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing until his death, Kiyoshi advocated for HIV/AIDS patients and treatment. He knew the power of information and believed everyone should have access to the knowledge that could save their lives.
After his own diagnosis in 1989, he poured every ounce of courage into a project that would outlive him: the Critical Path Project. What began as a newsletter became a lifeline—a 24-hour hotline, an online network, and a free internet service providing free internet to hundreds—offering science, hope, and honesty where others offered either hate and lies, or echoing silence. His newsletter was also mailed to thousands, including hundreds of incarcerated people who had no other access to AIDS/HIV resources.
He helped write ACT UP’s standards of care, pushing doctors and officials to treat patients like people, not statistics. He refused to let shame dictate science. He refused to let death be quiet, all while suffering with a diagnosis that could at that time, have meant death at anytime. If the dark night was calling to Kiyoshi, he was determined to ensure he would not go quietly.
When they tried to strip his website—one of the first public health sites on the internet—he sued. He became the lead plaintiff in a 1996 ACLU case that overturned the Communications Decency Act, defending the very internet we now use to speak our truths. He believe that truth shouldn’t be hidden by calling it indecent, truth should be shared. The supreme court agreed with him.
He even found time to fight for medical marijuana access for people dying of AIDS. The man he answered the call of so many was also a weed buyer, buying and distributing to patients in need.
A Light That Refuses to Go Out
Kiyoshi Kuromiya passed away in 2000—not of AIDS, as many papers rushed to say, but from cancer, a disease he had battled once already.
He was 57 years old.
But what he left behind is not ashes—it is fire.
Since his passing, he has been honored on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at Stonewall and celebrated with a Google Doodle, but the real tribute is this: his legacy still saves lives. Every time someone finds critical information online, every time a protester holds a sign instead of a weapon, every time a queer kid speaks their truth aloud—Kiyoshi is there.
What We Carry Forward
So why do I tell you this now, with headlines burning and tensions rising? What is it that Kiyoshi, the newest of our phoenixes, teaches?
Kiyoshi Kuromiya shows us what it looks like to choose peace again and again. His queerness did not weaken his resistance—it refined it. His radiance was quiet—but undeniable—and never ceased illuminating the path to justice.
Kiyoshi understood better than most what happens when fear whips a mob into frenzy and its acolytes cry in the streets: there is no more time for due process or even common sense! We must act—act now! Kiyoshi had seen that fear before, he was born at a time when that fear seized control.
Tell me, friends, did you catch that sour whiff on the air?
Does anyone else smell the snake oil?
If we let this cabinet of sycophants drag us into another “conflict” for the sake of a glorious leader’s pride, we are no better than our medieval forbears who bought piss in bottles to regrow hair.
We had a solution to the problem we now face. It was working. It was called the Iran Nuclear Deal. The current regime destroyed that in his first presidency, and we haven’t recovered since.
Would you let the drunk surgeon who already killed a family member from negligence operate on another?
Kiyoshi’s story teaches us how to fight—and how to fight well. But most importantly, it shows us we cannot do this alone. Kiyoshi’s wins were community wins. He was an intersectional figure who moved through the most influential civil rights acts in our history—all of which succeeded because of that community.
We need not just every member of the queer community, even those we don’t yet understand—we need the whole alphabet. Every marginalized group. Our allies with greater privilege. Everyone.
Because as Kiyoshi said it best:
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.”
So keep your lamps lit, your ships steady, and your sails ready to catch the next bold wind. Let the snake oil salesman that is fear sail on into the sunset.
Remember Kiyoshi, my dear defenders,
who knew, just as you now know:
We must never let fear take the helm.
Until our bold move,
~ Lady LiberTea ✨🫖
Ready to fight—Like Kiyoshi?
✨ What You Can Do, Right Now:
1. Share the Light
Stories like Kiyoshi's aren't in most history books. They live because we pass them on—because we refuse to let those who chose peace be forgotten in moments of war. If this piece lit a lantern in you, share it. Send it to your community, to your classroom, your family chat, your representative. Share it publicly and shamelessly. Let it radiate outward like the fire it came from. You can use the button below or copy the link—just don't let it go silent.
2. Speak Truth to Power
The drums of war are not abstract—they beat louder with each moment we remain quiet. Call your representatives and demand diplomacy, not devastation. Demand congressional oversight. Demand answers. The Iran Nuclear Deal had already proven effective. Its sabotage was not strategy—it was ego. You can use tools like FiveCalls.org or call directly. When you speak, you speak not just for you, but for every person that died before they could speak.
3. Protect the Most Vulnerable
History shows us exactly who gets hurt first—and worst—when war breaks out: queer people, disabled people, people of color, the poor, the immigrant, the unarmed, the unshielded. Support orgs on the ground who care for these communities before the fallout. Donate, uplift, or volunteer with groups like The Trevor Project, ACLU, Trans Lifeline, and your local peace coalitions. We cannot stop a war alone—but we can build a harbor for those it threatens to drown.
You are not alone. You never were.
The bell is calling for all hands.
Will you be joining?
~ L.L. ✨🫖
Excellent story and a way to honor him. Very relevant!
Brilliance.