Celebration, challenge mix at New York gay pride parade

NEW YORK – Celebration and pride mingled with distrust in New York on Sunday as crowds of people crowded the streets, waving rainbow flags, for the annual gay pride march.

Tennis legend Billie Jean King was one of the great police commissioners, along with Tyler Ford, a transgender rights advocate, and Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization. The event, and other similar ones in the country, commemorated the riots that erupted in response to a police raid in a New York gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, in June 1969.

Spectators and attendees in New York noted these origins during Sunday's event, which was both a celebration of the diversity of LGBT culture and a statement against anti-LGBT policies promoted by the President Donald Trump. serve in the army. They also denounced policies aimed at other communities, such as immigrants and minorities.

"We declare that we are here, everyone, that it is about immigrants, gay people or people of color, we will not accept what this administration does." said Diego Molano of Queens at his second Pride Parade. "You can not just put everyone in a cage."

Olivia Nadler, a Connecticut resident attending her third parade, said, "People who are oppressed are not going to go away, they are not going to be quiet, they are not going to be ignored."

Among the signs that people wore in the parade, there were phrases like "Black and Brown and Trans Lives Count" and "More Guns."

Ohemaa Dixon, 20, from Brooklyn, tore up about what the parade meant for her and the joy she felt seeing everyone come to the ceremony.

"It's good to be who you are and to love who you like and dress as you want to dress and do what you want to do because I think it's so important." to be who you are and who you like ". "I am moved about this because I think it's so beautiful when people are what they are, that's why I love coming to these things. I think it's really cool that people are coming and they are exactly what they want to be. "

Elected officials, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, were among the participants in the march.

Before starting, Cuomo officially unveiled a New York State memorial to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that honors the victims of intolerance. Located in the Hudson River Park, it features nine rocks with pieces of glass that can serve as prisms and reflect the rainbows in the sun.

Cuomo formed the commission to create an LGBT memorial after the Pulse shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people.

The theme of this year's march was "Defiantly Different". Eighty tanks and tens of thousands of marchers were expected.

In San Francisco, a gay pride weekend has ended with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and walking parade through the city.

The organizers were expecting large crowds for the event, which included more than 240 contingents. This year's theme was "Generations of Strength".