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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Pride parades: flags mix with victim portraits

Images of shooting victims and rainbow flags at celebration

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NEW YORK — Rainbow flags were held high along with portraits of the dead as thousands of people marched Sunday in gay pride parades tempered by this month’s massacre at a Florida gay nightclub.

Crowds of onlookers stood a dozen deep along Fifth Avenue for New York City’s parade. Some spectators held up orange “We are Orlando” signs, and indications of increased security were everywhere, with armed officers standing by. An announcer introducing state officials and guests also shouted out, “Love is love! New York is Orlando!” in memory of the 49 people killed in Florida. Elected officials turned out, as did presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

She walked several blocks of the march, joining New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rev. Al Sharpton for an appearance at Stonewall Inn, the bar where a 1969 police raid helped catalyze the gay rights movement.

On Sunday, with her Twitter handle appearing in rainbow colors, Clinton wrote: “One year ago, love triumphed in our highest court. Yet LGBT Americans still face too many barriers. Let’s keep marching until they don’t. -H”

Authorities had expected a larger-than-usual crowd, and 15-year-old Chelsea Restrepo, of Staten Island, was among the onlookers. She had brushed aside her father’s concerns about security to attend the march for the first time.

“What happened in Orlando made me want to come more,” said Restrepo.

Kenny Hillman, a Brooklyn filmmaker, was ready to roar his Triumph Bonneville down Fifth Avenue.

The transgender New Yorker said he hadn’t planned to march.

“For me, I wasn’t going to ride because I have 17-month-old twins at home. But then Orlando happened, and seeing so many of my friends shrink in fear made me realize that coming here was more important,” said Hillman, wearing an anti-assault guns T-shirt.

New York’s parade was one of several being held Sunday across the country, along with San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis. They came two weeks after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

In Chicago, 49 marchers at the head of the parade each held aloft a poster-sized photograph of a different Orlando victim as the procession wound through the city. Above each photo were the words, “Never forget.”

Despite the somber start, parade-goers seemed enthusiastic once marchers and floats began moving, cheering and dancing along the route. Many participants said the tributes to the dead in Orlando didn’t dampen the energy and fun associated with the pride parade.

“It is another on a list of brutalities over the years (against gays),” said Joe Conklin, 74, of Chicago.

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