A Pride Parade Like No Other
For more than 12 hours, 150,000 marchers offered rainbows, other visual innovations
MICHAEL LUONGO
STONEWALL 50/ WORLDPRIDE
The Heritage of Pride banner in Sunday’s parade.
BY MICHAEL LUONGO
New York was awash in rainbows as
it is every June, but this time there
was a special meaning: the 50th
anniversary of the Stonewall Riots,
which ushered in the modern LGBTQ civil
rights era. New York’s WorldPride is the fi rst
time the event, originating in Rome as a challenge
to the Vatican’s power over LGBTQ rights
issues in the year 2000, had ever been held in
the US. According to the organizers, around
150,000 people participated in the main march,
with about 7,000 each day at the Pride Island
entertainment event.
While complete statistics were not fully available
at press time, several million viewed the
march, and it might have been the single largest
one-day event in New York history. According
to a Facebook post by Matthew McMorrow,
an out gay top aide to Mayor Bill de Blasio, the
march ran for 12 hours and 32 minutes, beating
by nearly three hours its previous record.
The choice of grand marshals played homage
to the history of the movement with Gay Liberation
Front, one of the fi rst gay rights groups,
among them. Others included the Trevor Project,
the cast of the transgender TV phenomenon
“Pose,” UK Black Pride co-founder Phyllis Akua
Opoku-Gyimah, better known as Lady Phyll ,
and Monica Helms , creator of the Transgender
Pride Flag.
While in many ways a celebration of how far
New York and the world have come on LGBTQ
issues, many participating in the parade wanted
to ensure that the need for further progress
was not overlooked. And that included those
symbolically leading it. At a press conference
in the Empire State Building, one of New York’s
most recognizable and visited landmarks, Indya
MICHAEL LUONGO
Author Mona Eltahawy honoring pioneering non-binary writer Kate
Bornstein.
MICHAEL LUONGO
Caribbean contingents brought a feathered sense of Carnival to the
parade.
Moore, who plays Angel in “Pose, ” gave a
moving speech about police brutality, the diffi
cult bargain in corporate sponsorship, trans
identity, and the LGBTQ movement’s disregard
for issues affecting marginalized communities.
“When I see the police in the streets, I think
about when I was in foster care, I was beaten
and I had my hair ripped out of my head by a
young cis girl, and I was arrested for it. Twice.
Because she told the police I was a man,” Moore
said. “I remember crying in that room, very
scared. And I remember thinking about what
happened to Sandra Bland and thinking that
would happen to me.”
Moore continued, “I am wondering: Why they
are there? Are they there to protect us or are
they there to police us? Maybe they are there
to make sure we don’t riot again.” Asking that
Heritage of Pride, the group that produces the
parade, consider hiring an outside security
MICHAEL LUONGO
A blocks-long Rainbow Flag is carried down Fifth Avenue after
sunset.
MICHAEL LUONGO
“Pose” star Indya Moore offered bracing remarks at a pre-parade
press conference.
fi rm rather than police, she added, “So many of
us don’t feel safe, even when there are rainbows
painted on their cars. It feels like a mockery,
when I think about my friend Layleen,” referring
to Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco,
a transgender woman who died on Rikers Island
while placed in “restrictive housing,” which
involves 17 hours each day in isolation.
Moore was also critical of the largely white
power structure in many LGBTQ organizations,
reminding those in the audience that
“our blackness and our brownness isn’t included
in those voices to liberate,” particularly admonishing
the Human Rights Campaign. They
also called on T-Mobile, one of the main sponsors
of Pride, to provide more help to grassroots
organizations that help trans women, including
those who are sex workers.
➤ HERITAGE OF PRIDE, continued on p.5
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