Elsewhere in the US on Sunday, Lori Lightfoot, the first openly gay mayor of Chicago, was named grand marshal. The marches concluded a month of Stonewall commemorations in New York, coinciding with the city hosting WorldPride, an event that started in Rome in 2000. “The LGBTQ community is an essential part of NYC,” said NYPD commissioner James O’Neill.Īctivists march in the Queer Liberation March, in Greenwich Village. The New York police department, which earlier this month apologized for Stonewall, said that there had not been any “credible threats” against the main march. On Sunday Flemington, New Jersey mayor Betsy Driver, considered the first openly intersex person voted into public office in the US, was a grand marshal of the main parade. On Saturday, the New York City Pride Run reportedly set a world record with 10,000 finishers in Central Park.
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“It feels really great to not feel like you have to pretend anymore.” Savannah Lopez, also 18, told the Guardian: “I haven’t been to Pride before and I’m actually coming out today to everybody that I know – I just thought this was a really good way to do it. Now that it’s 2019 and the world is changing, we get a big celebration to honor us – regardless of the presidency.” Jessie Page, an 18-year-old parade participant who identifies as gender queer non-binary, said Pride offered “an open and accepting place where nobody judges you.
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You get to express yourself freely Jessie Page, 18 I think both things are important.” It’s an open and accepting place where nobody judges you. Kaiser said the two New York marches spoke to “tension which has existed in the movement from the very beginning … between a desire to be as fully integrated into the majority of society as possible, and the desire to see the movement as a way to celebrate how different we are. “I hope everyone will remember that it’s never been more important to imagine a different world than it is right now and that it is the duty of everyone celebrating today to dedicate themselves to getting rid of the most loathsome president of my lifetime and … put the American government back into the hands of decent, honorable, loving people.” “The most important thing is that the mass of humanity in the streets today proves that it is possible to imagine a different world and create it within your own lifetime,” Kaiser said. He said they showed that positive change is possible – and that participants must keep working to achieve it. “The legacy of Stonewall is about people,” Fay said, “not about corporate participation.”Ĭharles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis, acting director of the LGBTQ Public Policy Center at Hunter College and a Guardian contributor, also participated in both events. The founder of the Lavender & Green Alliance, which celebrates Irish LGBTQ culture, Fay told the Guardian corporate participation in Pride reflected progress but Reclaim emphasized community elders’ grassroots efforts to effect change. The second march was one visible sign of tensions within the LGBTQ community – as, later in the day, was a protest which briefly blocked the route of the parade in San Francisco.īrendan Fay, a civil rights activist who successfully fought a long battle for LGBTQ inclusion in the New York St Patrick’s Day Parade, said he would participate in both events. “This does not represent the ‘spirit of Stonewall’ in this 50th anniversary year.” “The annual Pride parade has become a bloated, over-policed circuit party, stuffed with 150 corporate floats,” the Reclaim Pride Coalition said in a statement. The legacy of Stonewall is about people, not about corporate participation Brendan Fay A smaller Queer Liberation March started at 9.30am at the Stonewall, where patrons resisted a police raid in 1969, sparking the modern gay rights movement. Organizers expected 150,000 people to parade and hundreds of thousands more to line the streets to watch. New York’s march kicked off at noon with nearly 700 contingents. Cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle were also hosting parades commemorating the 50th anniversary of the clash between New York police and patrons of the Stonewall Inn that sparked the gay rights movement.