reclaiming pride for the lgbtq community

In the last two months, Heritage of Pride (HOP), the organization entrusted with the annual LGBTQ Pride Parade/March and the official NYC Pride events around the city throughout June, has revealed some rather shocking changes to this year’s celebration. Among these changes, decided behind closed doors with no public discussion with members of the city’s LGBTQ communities, were limiting each marching contingent to no more than 200 people; issuing wrist bands to those contingents and stating that no one without a wrist band would be able to join in the march; and a drastic and illogical change to the march route.

These facts were originally discovered by activists who had marched with advocacy groups last year behind a rainbow banner saying, “WE RESIST.” The activists, myself among them, were made aware of these changes in late March when we were rebuffed by HOP in our effort to allow a Resistance contingent in this year’s march. Many LGBTQ New Yorkers are unaware of these changes, which run contrary to the spirit of Pride as an open event for all members of the New York’s LGBTQ communities.

Heritage of Pride said the reasons for limiting contingents were due to the long running time of the Pride March in recent years. This flies in the face of the facts: the numbers of corporations participating in the march had exploded over the past few years, and their floats are largely to blame for the march’s congestion issues.

Then came the matter of the route change. For over 20 years the Pride March has begun in midtown and proceeded down Fifth Avenue, then west along 8th and Christopher Streets, ending between Greenwich and Washington Streets near the Pride Fest street fair. This year’s parade route will begin at Seventh Avenue and 17th Street, move south to Christopher Street, then east to Fifth Avenue and north to Madison Square in the mid-20s. The Pride Fest will remain in the far West Village. Marchers will end up two miles from the Pride Fest and all the bars, restaurants and businesses of the West Village where revelers spend time after the march.

On their website, HOP claimed the route change was in preparation for next year’s Stonewall 50th Anniversary Pride. Next year New York will also be the host of World Pride, the international LGBTQ Pride celebration held in a different global city each year. How HOP reasoned that the best way to prepare for a huge influx of international and American visitors to next year’s Pride was to shrink the span of the Pride March this year is anyone’s guess.

In March we asked for meetings with HOP and the NYPD. We were told that we would be given the opportunity to address the changes at HOP’s “open meeting” in mid-April and that they would set up a closed-door roundtable discussion among representatives of HOP, the NYPD and members of the six organizations who had come together to work on our goals. We were happy to meet with HOP at the open meeting to go over the issues surrounding the changes to the march. Then HOP canceled their April open meeting. We now had no way to publicly discuss our concerns prior to the roundtable with the NYPD. We decided that our only option was to formally draft our demands to both HOP and the NYPD and deliver them in person. Under the name of The Reclaim Pride Coalition, we did so and sent copies to Mayor deBlasio’s office. Within two days, HOP and the NYPD cancelled the round table discussion. It became clear that HOP and the NYPD did not want these concerns addressed, at least not publicly. So we scheduled a town hall and invited HOP and the NYPD to attend. The 80 to 100 people who came to the town hall agreed with the demands and signed up to be kept informed about steps moving forward. No one identifying themselves as NYPD attended. Three senior organizers from HOP attended but did not speak during the town hall.

HOP had notified us a day earlier that they would respond to the formal demands by May 21, just over one month before the Pride March. On Monday May 14 and Tuesday May 15, as this paper was going to press, Heritage of Pride was scheduled to hold their May open meeting and a Pride March planning meeting, respectively. Members of the Reclaim Pride Coalition hope to attend both, unless they too are canceled.

Jay W. Walker is an organizer for the activist groups Gays Against Guns and Rise and Resist, as well as The Reclaim Pride Coalition. In April he received a 2018 Gay City News Impact Award for his activism.