Ramona Santorelli on Pride, Protest & Changing History in Rochester, NY

Episode 250 opens with a joke about champagne and confetti cannons. It is a milestone episode, and Mark and Corey are in good spirits. Corey just came from the Rochester Pride parade, where the weather turned biblical halfway through. Thunder, lightning, a full deluge. The drag queens' hair was falling apart. The goth kids blended right in with the running mascara. It was, as Corey put it, a wonderful time.

Then Ramona Santorelli walks in, and the conversation shifts into something much bigger than a parade recap. Ramona is 68 years old, a Brooklyn kid who came to Rochester on a basketball scholarship to St. John Fisher College and never left. She has spent the better part of four decades at the center of Rochester's civil rights movements, and she has the stories to prove it.

No Regard for Authority Whatsoever

Ramona traces her activism back to third grade. She had a lay teacher she thought was deeply unfair. So during lunch one day, while the teacher was out of the room, nine-year-old Ramona created a petition, went desk to desk, and collected 35 signatures out of 42 students. She presented it to the teacher when she came back. The teacher had a fit. The 35 who signed it got punished. The seven who did not got rewarded.

When the report card came home, it read: Ramona is very disrespectful and insolent. She has no regard for authority whatsoever. Her mother read it. Ramona was mortified. Years later, she found the report card in a box, framed it, and hung it up. She still has it.

The Roar on Main Street

In 1989, twenty years after the Stonewall riots, Rochester held its first Pride parade. Ramona and her girlfriend at the time rode on top of a car in wedding gowns. Their friend Laurie wore a chauffeur hat and drove. Marriage equality was not even a conversation back then, and Ramona wanted to make a point about the rights they were denied. Cans rattled from the back of the car.

The parade was scheduled for a Saturday at 5:00 PM on Main Street. As they drove down the street, it was empty. No parade. No people. Then they turned the corner. There was a roar. The people had been looking for them, and they had been looking for the people. Up until that moment, the gay community congregated mostly in bars. That roar was the sound of a community stepping into the open for the first time.

Top Free 7: Six Years to Change a Law

In June of 1985, Ramona was sunbathing in her backyard near the Museum and Science Center, lying on her stomach, nearly asleep. A guard came over and told her she had to put her shirt on. She looked up, spotted a man sunbathing shirtless on a lounge chair nearby, and told the guard she would gladly put her shirt on if he told the man to do the same. The guard came back with a captain who cited the New York State penal law.

She put her shirt on. But as she stood up, she pointed at the guard and said: this will not be the last time. Then she went home and started planning.

The protest she organized was called the Top Free Picnic. She chose that name deliberately. Topless carried connotations of bars and pornography. That was not what this was about. Her mission, stated plainly, was to normalize women's bodies and help young girls grow up with a positive body image. Two police captains came to her porch the Thursday before the Saturday protest and asked if they could handle it quietly. She said no. There was already a press release.

The day of the protest was chaos. Radio stations were parked at Cobbs Hill looking for them. When the cop cars arrived, everyone converged. A woman named Nikki Kraft, a professional agitator from out of state, went off-script and started confronting the officers directly. Ramona wanted a strong protest, not a confrontational one. She stepped into the circle anyway. She was 28 years old, wearing a one-piece bathing suit she could roll down. She rolled it down, walked in, and raised her arms. The crowd roared again. The AP photo went to hundreds of papers across the country.

They were arrested. They went back in 1987 and 1988, and the police drove away without touching them. They went back in 1989 and got arrested again. The case went all the way to the New York Court of Appeals. On July 7, 1992, the court ruled in their favor in People v. Santorelli. Women in New York State could no longer be arrested for being topless in public. It took six years.

Thirty Years of Basketball

Ramona noticed early on that there was a racial divide even within the lesbian community. As a basketball player, she thought she knew how to fix it. In 1990, she opened an open gym at the Downtown United Presbyterian Church, put a notice in the Empty Closet, and started merging the Black and white lesbian communities through pickup basketball. She ran it two nights a week for thirty years, until COVID shut it down.

Cousin Vinny in Small Claims Court

Ramona was hired as head basketball coach at Mercy High School. She was ecstatic. Then, while she was in Florida for her father's surprise 80th birthday party, she got a phone call from the athletic director. The school was rescinding the offer. She had already signed a contract. She had already met the team.

She stayed in Florida. Her father died. When she came back to Rochester, she filed in small claims court. She represented herself. Her cousin Vinny sat next to her and the school's lawyer assumed he was her attorney. The school claimed there was no contract. Ramona pulled out her phone bill from Florida, showing every call she had made trying to reach them. The judge asked the school's lawyer for the contract. The lawyer handed it over. The judge banged his gavel and awarded Ramona the full amount. He told her she could personally shut the school down if she did not receive a check within a month. She got the check.

Twelve Lesbians Carried His Coffin

Ramona's brother died of AIDS in March of 1993. He was an IV drug user who had come to Rochester to be closer to Ramona and their mother. The lesbian community took him in completely. When he died, twelve of Ramona's friends carried his coffin to his grave. Ramona and her mother sat back and counted them. Her brother had told someone before he died that he had always had a hard time with gay men because of his time in prison. But he loved the lesbians.

Ramona still tears up telling it.

Rochester, the Parks, and the Long Haul

Ramona is 68 now. She works with emotionally challenged, trauma-based high school students at O'Connor Academy, a job she says has tempered her and made her more patient. She is a vegetarian since 1978. She swims every day at Mendon Ponds Park from May through October. She says the parks are a gift of beauty and serenity, and she means it.

When asked what she would tell her younger self, she is honest. The activism cost her coaching jobs. It cost her income. She wonders sometimes what her life would look like if she had just found a steady job. But she does not think she would change it. Someone had to push. She had the freedom and the support to be that person. She used it.