New York City's streets a year ago were awash in protests over the death of George Floyd and clashes between demonstrators and officers. The role police officers should play in the annual parade has been debated for years, but it took on new heat amid a national reckoning around police brutality. It’s somewhat of a moot point this year with pandemic limitations still in play until only recently, the New York City Pride event planned for Sunday organized by Heritage of Pride is largely a virtual one.īut the ban will be in effect next year until at least 2025, the organizers said. “Why should I have to take off (the uniform) as if I’m ashamed?” “Why should I have to hide a part of me,” asked Ana Arboleda, a sergeant with the NYPD who has marched in the parade several times and is the vice-president of the Gay Officers Action League. of course you should be able to celebrate and express your pride, but you don’t need to do it in a uniform that has perpetuated violence against many of the people who are trying to celebrate their pride that day.”įor others, presence of LGBTQ police marchers is an expression of hard-fought diversity and inclusion that should be celebrated, a hallmark of how integral LGBTQ people are in the fabric of American life.
![nyc gay pride police nyc gay pride police](https://img.apmcdn.org/854ee9859fc0c819c83d6685fb95a391a586cfaf/widescreen/c75c7d-20190630-pride03.jpg)
“Folks still have challenging and traumatic and many times horrific relationships with law enforcement,” said John Blasco, a parade regular.
![nyc gay pride police nyc gay pride police](https://whyy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_17284648075835-768x512-1-768x512.jpg)
Tensions between law enforcement and some parts of the LGBTQ community still exist, a half century later. Doster said many of its Black, brown and trans members feel threatened by their presence.For some, cops shouldn't have a uniformed presence at a march commemorating the 1969 Stonewall uprising, sparked by a police raid on a gay bar. But Heritage of Pride last month also decided to bar uniformed police officers from its future parades. The two groups have differed over their policies on police participation in their events, which the Reclaim Pride Coalition opposes. The defiant stand gave birth to the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
![nyc gay pride police nyc gay pride police](https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cpt101407401_high.jpg)
Last year's march produced no discernable spike in new coronavirus cases, he said.īoth events commemorate the June 28, 1969, uprising at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, when patrons fought back during a police raid.
#Nyc gay pride police free#
Under sunny skies with muggy conditions that felt like 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), a racially mixed crowd of men and women chanted "No Justice, No Peace," and other slogans, some critical of the New York Police Department.Īfter linking last year's message to the Black Lives Matter movement, Walker said this year's theme is returning to the coalition's standard: "None of us are free until all of us are free."Īlthough the group had urged marchers to wear masks, few did. Walker said the group was hoping to draw up to 70,000 marchers. Meanwhile, thousands of people organized by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, whose parade began as a protest to the Pride march two years ago, marched more than 30 blocks down New York's Seventh Avenue with rainbow flags and signs that included "Liberation and Justice."Ĭoalition cofounder Jay W. “At the end of the day, HIV is just a virus, and we have the ability to prevent it and to treat it,” said Daskalakis, who is director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV/AIDS expert Dr Demetre Daskalakis, one of the event's grand marshals, urged all LGBTQ+ community members to get tested frequently for the virus. “We've made incredible progress in equality across the country, but trans people are under attack,” he added. “Six days after the shooting, we had a funeral service for my best friend and I made a promise to him that day that I would never stop fighting for a world that he would be proud of,” he told ABC, which aired the event.
![nyc gay pride police nyc gay pride police](https://static.toiimg.com/thumb/msid-83831901,imgsize-82587,width-400,resizemode-4/83831901.jpg)
Guests included Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the June 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, who has since become an advocate for LGBTQ rights legislation.