People lined the streets of New York on Sunday to wave rainbow flags, celebrate LGBT equality and renew calls for action in what organizers billed as the largest gay pride celebration in history.
About 150,000 parade marchers and an estimated 4 million spectators commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that triggered the modern LGBT movement.
Similar parades were being held around the world, with celebratory events in liberal democracies and growing fights for equality in other places.
Photo: Reuters
North Macedonia held its first gay pride march on Saturday. In Singapore, marchers called for scrapping a law banning gay sex. In Turkey, members of Istanbul’s gay and transgender community gathered for a small rally that ended with tear gas and rubber bullets on Sunday after their annual march was banned for the fifth consecutive year.
“It’s hard for us today, but can you even imagine what some of these people went through in the past? There’s no way to thank them,” said Josh Greenblatt, 25, an actor attending the New York event.
The festivities were set to conclude on Sunday night with closing ceremonies at Times Square and a waterfront concert by Madonna.
The parade was preceded on Sunday by a protest march by thousands of anti-corporate dissidents who rejected a uniformed police presence and commercial sponsorship.
The Queer Liberation March protested US detentions of migrant children and opposed actions by US President Donald Trump’s administration that they said curtail the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and others.
In San Francisco, companies such as Google, T-Mobile, Facebook and Netflix lent the parade a corporate flavor. Dissidents opposing corporate sponsorship blocked an intersection of the parade route, shouting: “Stonewall was a riot.”
“The system of policing upholds white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, gender binaries and capitalist rule,” one San Francisco protester said over a megaphone.
San Francisco Pride declined to revoke the sponsorship or remove the company from the parade, but organizers said that the Google critics could protest the company’s policies as part of the parade’s “resistance contingent.”
In San Francisco, about 40 people interrupted the parade for just under an hour and two people were arrested while protesting police and corporation presence, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Protesters broke down barricades and threw water bottles at officers as they rushed onto the parade route. At least one protester fought with police and one officer was injured, police said.
Larraine and Peter Browne, who were visiting from Australia, told the Chronicle that they had never seen anything like the parade’s rainbow-colored display.
“Look at the costumes!” 80-year-old Peter Browne said.
In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker chose the parade day to sign an executive order creating a task force to study the rights of transgender students.
The task force is to look at what schools are doing to promote LGBT rights to make sure students have “welcoming” and “inclusive” environments.
In Chicago, the procession was cut short as thunderstorms rolled through the area, forcing police to cancel the event about three hours after it began.
The larger New York parade had 677 contingents, including community groups, major corporations and cast members from FX’s Pose. Organizers expected at least 150,000 people to march, with hundreds of thousands more lining the streets to watch.
Other Stonewall commemorations in New York included rallies, parties, film showings and a human rights conference. The celebration coincided with WorldPride, an international LGBT event that started in Rome in 2000 and was held in New York this year.
The New York City celebrations wrapped up Sunday night with a closing ceremony in Times Square featuring speeches and performances by Melissa Etheridge, Deborah Cox, Melanie C, MNEK, Jake Shears and others.
Some during the events also paused to consider the state of LGBT rights under Trump.
“They could turn back gay marriage. Don’t ever fool yourself,” said Christopher Edward Andrew, 53. “Elections matter. Votes matter.”
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided New York’s Stonewall Inn, ostensibly to shut down a mafia-owned establishment selling watered-down liquor without a license.
However, the raid followed a series of others at gay bars in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, and the patrons fought back, forcing police to barricade themselves inside.
That touched off several nights of riots and the birth of a movement.
New York was designated the site of World Pride this year, drawing an estimated 4 million people to the city.
Additional reporting by AP
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