The second march was one visible sign of tensions within the LGBTQ community – as, later in the day, was a protest which briefly blocked the route of the parade in San Francisco.īrendan Fay, a civil rights activist who successfully fought a long battle for LGBTQ inclusion in the New York St Patrick’s Day Parade, said he would participate in both events. “This does not represent the ‘spirit of Stonewall’ in this 50th anniversary year.” “The annual Pride parade has become a bloated, over-policed circuit party, stuffed with 150 corporate floats,” the Reclaim Pride Coalition said in a statement. The legacy of Stonewall is about people, not about corporate participation Brendan Fay A smaller Queer Liberation March started at 9.30am at the Stonewall, where patrons resisted a police raid in 1969, sparking the modern gay rights movement. Organizers expected 150,000 people to parade and hundreds of thousands more to line the streets to watch. New York’s march kicked off at noon with nearly 700 contingents. Cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle were also hosting parades commemorating the 50th anniversary of the clash between New York police and patrons of the Stonewall Inn that sparked the gay rights movement.
