“On the other side of that coin, it’s lost some of its revolutionary fervor. I never thought I would be in a march with Citibank and the N.Y.P.D. “One is, yeah, it’s wonderful that there are literally millions of people in the street and on the street watching this. “I have two contradictory feelings,” she said. “Gay liberation,” she said, “meant revolution.” The energy unleashed at Stonewall had changed everything. “It wasn’t in touch with the revolutionary spirit of the ’60s,” said Ellen Broidy, one of the Christopher Street Liberation Day organizers. The first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in 1970 was a break from its precursor, the Annual Reminder picket, where women had to wear dresses and marchers could not kiss or hold hands. “We’d joke about being insurgents, but we were reformers,” said Maria Tamburro, who served several terms on the board before being expelled last year amid disputes with other members.ĭivisions within the Pride community are as old as the march itself. He left the organization last year, along with a handful of other board members. When newcomers tried to make changes, said Vincent Maniscalco, who became the director of governance and briefly a co-chair, “we met resistance at every turn.” As the arguments grew, the two co-chairs resigned. We were moving too far away from the grass roots.”Ī slate of new board members complained about a lack of financial transparency and support for members of color. “And we were hearing cries from the community that we were becoming too corporate. “People were afraid to speak up because there were smear campaigns,” said Evan Brewer, who served in several leadership roles. power and visibility that would have been unimaginable to the demonstrators in that first march 49 years earlier, when it was still illegal for two men to dance together in New York.īut behind this success, there was turmoil within Heritage of Pride, a mostly volunteer organization with a volunteer board elected by members and a small paid staff. It was the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and close to four million visitors flocked to New York in a show of L.G.B.T.Q.
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Later that day, Heritage of Pride mounted the biggest march in its history, with live TV coverage and a closing performance by Madonna. When Reclaim announced its own march in 2019, for the morning hours before the official Heritage of Pride march, no one knew what to expect. “It was clear we were just hitting our heads against a wall,” said Ann Northrop, one of Reclaim’s organizers and a longtime activist. They initially tried to work within Heritage of Pride, pushing to reduce the police presence at the march and to get rid of corporate floats. Many of Reclaim’s organizers were veterans of ACT UP or other protest groups, reinvigorated after the election of Donald J. She heard about a group called the Reclaim Pride Coalition, which had formed a few years earlier in frustration over what the Pride march - originally a protest against police harassment - had become. My first Pride march was so exciting, but what are we actually doing?” So I could see the Heritage of Pride parade as this thing for white gay men, muscly, in glitter. “We didn’t have job protections,” she said. At the Pride march in 2018, her second, she recalled seeing all the corporate floats and the stores with rainbow flags and thinking, This doesn’t feel real. Let’s talk more when you get home.”įrancesca Barjon, 25, who is Black and bisexual, did not see herself in these stories. After they hung up, his father called back and said: “Have fun today. “It was a whole other experience of love and light and excitement.” On a rooftop at the end of the day, after some drinks, he called home and told his father that he was gay. “It was like the whole world opened up to me,” he said. When a friend dragged him into Manhattan for Pride, an hour-plus subway ride, he expected brunch and a little parade.
Michael Donahue was 25 and living with his parents in the Rockaway section of Queens in 2005, not fully open about his sexual orientation. Stories about Pride - and there must be millions of them - often go something like this. How did a celebration that delights millions of people create so much rancor and mistrust? “We’re at a pivotal moment where we either come back, or people will look elsewhere.”įor Heritage of Pride, which just two years ago staged the biggest march in its history, with five million spectators attending, it was a stunning turn. “This is the worst that I’ve ever seen it,” said Maria Colón, a longtime Heritage of Pride member and former board member.