They initially tried to work within Heritage of Pride, pushing to reduce the police presence at the march and to get rid of corporate floats. Many of Reclaim’s organizers were veterans of ACT UP or other protest groups, reinvigorated after the election of Donald J. She heard about a group called the Reclaim Pride Coalition, which had formed a few years earlier in frustration over what the Pride march - originally a protest against police harassment - had become. My first Pride march was so exciting, but what are we actually doing?” So I could see the Heritage of Pride parade as this thing for white gay men, muscly, in glitter. “We didn’t have job protections,” she said. At the Pride march in 2018, her second, she recalled seeing all the corporate floats and the stores with rainbow flags and thinking, This doesn’t feel real. Let’s talk more when you get home.”įrancesca Barjon, 25, who is Black and bisexual, did not see herself in these stories. After they hung up, his father called back and said: “Have fun today. “It was a whole other experience of love and light and excitement.” On a rooftop at the end of the day, after some drinks, he called home and told his father that he was gay. “It was like the whole world opened up to me,” he said. When a friend dragged him into Manhattan for Pride, an hour-plus subway ride, he expected brunch and a little parade. Michael Donahue was 25 and living with his parents in the Rockaway section of Queens in 2005, not fully open about his sexual orientation. Stories about Pride - and there must be millions of them - often go something like this. How did a celebration that delights millions of people create so much rancor and mistrust? “We’re at a pivotal moment where we either come back, or people will look elsewhere.”įor Heritage of Pride, which just two years ago staged the biggest march in its history, with five million spectators attending, it was a stunning turn.
The parade is scheduled for June after the coronavirus prevented many Pride events worldwide last year, including in New York which instead hosted virtual performances in front of masked participants and honored front-line workers in the pandemic crisis.“This is the worst that I’ve ever seen it,” said Maria Colón, a longtime Heritage of Pride member and former board member. The group called the ban an “abrupt about-face” and said the decision “to placate some of the activists in our community is shameful.” Word of the ban came out Friday when the Gay Officers Action League said in a release it was disheartened by the decision. Police will provide first response and security “only when absolutely necessary as mandated by city officials,” the group said, adding it hoped to keep police officers at least one city block away from event perimeter areas where possible. It will also increase the event’s security budget to boost the presence of community-based security and first responders while reducing the police department’s presence. “The sense of safety that law enforcement is meant to provide can instead be threatening, and at times dangerous, to those in our community who are most often targeted with excessive force and/or without reason,” the group said. In their statement, NYC Pride urged members of law enforcement to “acknowledge their harm and to correct course moving forward.” NEW YORK (AP) - Organizers of New York City’s Pride events said Saturday they are banning police and other law enforcement from marching in their huge annual parade until at least 2025 and will also seek to keep on-duty officers a block away from the celebration of LGBTQ people and history.