New York — New York politicians defiantly raised the rainbow flag on Thursday in Stonewall National Monument Amid a loud and cheering crowd, he berated the Trump administration for it Remove known code Proud of an LGBTQ+ educator.
“We did it,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman Segal said after he helped raise the flag near the American flag in a small Greenwich Village park crowded with more than a hundred people. Many spectators chanted “Put it up!”
“If you can’t fly the Pride flag steps from the Stonewall Memorial, at the National Memorial for LGBTQ Liberation, where can you fly it?” Hoylman asked Segal, a Democrat who is the first openly gay person elected to office. “So we brought it back.”
Until a few days ago, the flag had flown for several years on a flagpole in the park at the heart of the site managed by the National Park Service. The park is across the street from The Stonewall Innthe gay bar where a 1969 police raid sparked and helped spur an uprising The modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The initial rainbow flag being raised on a pole brought into the park was short-lived. The activists, alarmed that the rainbow flag was flying so low on a separate pole, immediately removed it and raised it again on the same pole as the American flag, leaving the two flags on the same rope billowing in the cool breeze.
Jay W. Walker, one of the activists who helped secure the Pride flag in its final place, said advocates would get it back if the park service pulled it down.
“We will continue to do so,” he said, adding: “Our community will not stand for the disrespect of our park and our flagpole by the Trump administration.”
The Park Service said it complies with federal guidance on flags, including a Jan. 21 Park Service memo that largely restricts the agency to displaying those of the U.S., Department of the Interior, and POW/MIA recognition, with exceptions that include providing “historical context.”
On Thursday, the Interior Ministry refused to raise the flag, calling it a “political ploy” and criticizing the city’s Democratic leadership.
“Today’s political pomp shows how incompetent New York City officials are and completely out of sync with the issues their city faces,” the department said in a prepared statement.
Activists who Pressed to display the flag They view its removal as a deliberate insult that exacerbates other recent changes they find objectionable and ominous, e.g Eliminate many references to transgender people At the memorial.
“The new Trump administration is literally stealing our pride, or trying to,” Ken Kidd said. It aided early efforts to permanently install the flagin an interview Wednesday. “It’s a form of identity theft, where they’re really trying to remove those symbols of who we are — those symbols of our history, those symbols of our progress, those symbols of our future.”
The flag’s removal also sparked complaints from a series of Democratic officials in New York, including New York Mayor Zahran Mamdani, Governor Kathy Hochul, US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
The rainbow flag still appears on a city-owned pole just outside the park, and smaller flags wave along its fence, where a A local volunteer maintains it.
After former Democratic President Barack Obama He created the Stonewall Monument In 2016, The defenders were eager To see the Pride flag flying daily on federal lands. When it finally happened a few years later, they saw the show as an acknowledgment of the status and visibility of members of the LGBTQ+ community in the nation.
Shortly after Trump, a Republican, returned to office last year, he took aim at Trump Diversity, equity and inclusion Initiatives in the US government and outside. In one of these moves, his Defense Minister, Pete Hegseth, Renaming a Navy ship Which is named after Harvey Milk, Murdered gay rights activist and a San Francisco city official who served during the Korean War. The ship is now named for Chief Petty Officer Oscar V. Peterson, a World War II sailor who was awarded the Medal of Honor.
The Trump administration also scrutinized and researched interpretive materials at national parks, museums, and monuments to remove Or change the descriptions Which the government says is “divisive”. or partisan” or “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living.”
The park service did not answer specific questions about Stonewall’s location and flag policy, including whether any flags have been removed from other parks.