She added: “The idea of officers being excluded is disheartening and runs counter to our shared values of inclusion and tolerance. The New York Police Department commissioner apologized for the raid during a briefing in 2019, calling it “wrong, plain and simple.”ĭetective Sophia Mason, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department, said on Saturday the department’s “annual work to ensure a safe, enjoyable Pride season has been increasingly embraced by its participants.” The Queer Liberation March aimed for a protest vibe, saying the main Pride march was too heavily policed by the same department that raided Stonewall a half century earlier. In 2019, there were two marches in Manhattan after some in the community concluded that the annual parade had become too commercialized. READ MORE: How moving to NYC led to my liberation as a bisexual man Pride NYC’s announcement Saturday follows a division among organizers in recent years in planning for celebrations of LGBTQ pride in New York City.
Pride season occurs this year amid activism inspired by the response to racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death last year at the hands of police in Minneapolis. In this Jfile photo, a crowd surges along Eighth Street as marchers pack the street during the gay pride parade in New York. The uprising is largely credited with fueling the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Those marches came a year after the 1969 uprising outside Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, in response to a police raid.