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JUNE 16, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
BROOKLYN SHOWS ITS PRIDE!
Plenty of love, smiles, and acceptance on display at Park Slope parade
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
It was a Saturday evening
love fest in Brooklyn.
In a June 8 twilight parade
down Park Slope’s Fifth
Avenue that drew thousands
and lasted for hours,
the crowd — both activists
and elected offi cials marching
and spectators lining the
sidewalk for the event’s 15-
block stretch — emphasized
over and over again that love,
acceptance, and diversity
were the key words defi ning
LGBTQ Pride in the city’s
most populous borough.
And if the evening was
centered on queer pride, it
was also a celebration of
pride in the special qualities
of Brooklyn and of New York
City as whole.
For spectator Rosin Kaplan,
who grew up in Park
Slope, moved elsewhere,
including San Francisco
and, most recently for fi ve
years, New Orleans, moving
back to the Flatbush
side of Prospect Park three
years ago was a welcome
coming home.
“I would say one of the
reasons I’m back in New
York is that I didn’t want
to have any more anxiety
about being gay,” Kaplan
said. “After so many years
of being stressed about it
as an adult, it’s really nice
to be older and be like really
gay in a really gay city.
I mean this city is so gay. It’s
so relaxing. It’s normal here
to be gay.”
Kaplan and her business
partner in a T-shirt
company, Sasha Rose,
who was visiting for 10
days from New Orleans,
had spent the afternoon
vending their T-shirts at
the Pride Festival, and
said they were ready to
sleep once the parade
wrapped up.
“We want to be ready to
go to Riis Beach tomorrow
and be gay there,” Kaplan
said.
Jeremy Aviles, who was
visiting from Orlando, Fla.,
with a friend, also voiced
wonder at the exuberance
he came upon at Brooklyn
Pride.
“It’s amazing. It’s wild
for sure, and it’s all about
love from what I’m seeing,”
he said.
Becca Farsace and Allison
Talum are a couple who
just moved in together in an
apartment around the corner
from Fifth Avenue after
each lived in a different part
of the borough.
“This is our fi rst time
coming,” Farsace said of
Brooklyn Pride. “We’re new
to the neighborhood but not
to Brooklyn. I really dig
the community here and
it feels smaller and not as
commercial ized.”
Both she and Talum
pointed to the large number
of families in attendance
with their small children.
“One thing that’s great
is that Park Slope is a real
family sort of neighborhood,
and I really appreciate
that everybody is bringing
their kids out and seeing the
community for what it is, a
very loving and accepting
neighborho od,” Talum said.
City Comptroller Scott
Stringer, marching with
his wife and two young
boys, also pointed to the
joys families can fi nd at
Brooklyn Pride.
“Since Max and Miles
were literally born they’ve
been going to Pride in Manhattan,
but this is the fi rst
time they’ve been out at
night at Brooklyn Pride,”
the comptroller said. “So
it’s learning experience, it’s
a teaching moment, but it’s
great to march with your
family… It’s why we raise
kids in the city because
they get the education of a
lifetime, the way I did. And
they’re going to be better
for it.
Borough President Eric
Adams said the Brooklyn
event perfectly captures a
half century of LGBTQ traditions
that have grown up
since the Stonewall riots in
1969.
“It actually says that the
spirit of Harvey Milk, who
died in San Francisco, continues
to cascade here in
Brooklyn with a large parade,”
Adams said, before
boasting, “It proves that
Brooklyn is ground zero
for Gay Pride.”
Carlos Menchaca, the
fi rst out gay member of the
City Council elected from
Brooklyn, also hailed the
spirit of the Park Slope celebration.
“Everyone feels welcome,”
he declared, before
turning to one of the evening’s
political implications
— that he and his four gay
Council colleagues all face
term limits in 2021. Activists
several weeks ago announced
an effort, dubbed
LGBTQ in 2021, to ensure
that queer representation
on the Council will not vanish
as a result of these term
limits.
Menchaca was joined in
the parade by nearly a dozen
of his Council colleagues,
including out gay Speaker
Corey Johnson from Manhattan
and Daniel Dromm
from Queens.
Jared Arader, who is
president of the borough’s
LGBTQ Lambda Independent
Democrats, echoed
Menchaca’s emphasis on the
2021 elections, saying of his
PRIDE AND JOY: Smiles and love were everywhere on Park Slope’s
Fifth Avenue. Photos by Donna Aceto
club’s participation in the
parade, “This is our opportunity
to show Brooklyn’s
LGBTQ community that we
are engaged in local politics;
we care about local politics.
We care about representation,
and we have to make
sure that the rest of the city
know that just because marriage
got done, just because
GENDA the Gender Expression
Non-Discrimination
Act got done, we’re not
done.”
The club, Arader said, has
grown during the Trump
era surge of activism on the
left. As important, he said,
Lambda is growing beyond
its historic roots in affl uent,
predominately white neighborhoods
like Park Slope
and Brooklyn Heights and
drawing in increased numbers
of transgender members
and people of color.
“We’re marching in Park
Slope right now because
that’s been the traditional
heart of Brooklyn’s community
but we’re moving out,
moving from Park Slope to
where we belong,” he said.
Other elected offi cials
marching in the Brooklyn
parade spoke to more
global political issues, as
well. Menchaca repeated
his criticism of Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s recent broadening
of the range of criminal
offenses on which he
would work with federal
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents.
Though Menchaca got
blowback from several of his
Council colleagues because
the incremental offenses included
some sex crimes, the
councilmember insisted,
“It’s about trust, and the one
thing you can’t legislate is
trust and when you send a
signal as the mayor of New
York that you’re okay cooperating
with ICE for any reason
whatsoever then it sends
a signal that you’re not important
and that’s the wrong
message and that you can’t
get back.”
Jumaane Williams, a former
Brooklyn councilmember
who earlier this year
won the race to succeed State
Attorney General Letitia
James as the city’s public advocate,
said of his new post,
“I think it’s a pretty cool one.
I get to be an activist. I get to
be an organizer. I get to hold
government accountable on
behalf of groups as I’ve tried
to do for the past 10 years.”
Asked about his travels
in recent weeks, not only to
Albany but to other upstate
cities as well, Williams explained
that he is looking
to organize unifi ed support
statewide for a tenant protection
bill that he described
as “the best combination of
upstate and downstate legislation
I’ve seen in a long
time.”