Tens of thousands turn out for Gay Pride parade in New York

By Alvaro Celorio and Jorge Fuentelsaz New — At many as 150,000 people, according to organizers, on Sunday in downtown New York City waved rainbow banners and other signs and marched in the WorldPride parade to express gay pride and continue pushing for LGBTI rights.

Multicolored floats, stilt-walkers, drag queens, heterosexuals, lesbians, gays, non-governmental organization members, activists, actors, television performers and elected politicians were all on hand in the Big Apple on Sunday to celebrate gay pride and the 50th anniversary of the iconic Stonewall riots, which was a key turning point in the struggle for equal rights for gay people.

The celebrations were briefly interrupted by a summer rainstorm, although the morning had been sunny and hot.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio - who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination - were the top political officials at the parade.

Also on hand was famous fashion designer Donatella Versace, who participated riding on the Stonewall Inn float and told EFE that she felt proud to be present as the “new ambassador” of the emblematic gar bar.

“I think it’s very appropriate that we’re here today and that we’re fighting for human rights,” Versace said at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 26th Street, where the parade got under way.

The first Gay Pride parade was staged in 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969, after police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar resulting in riots that are widely considered to be a watershed moment in the modern gay rights movement.

The march was headed, as it has been every year since 1986, by members of the female Sirens motorcycle club, who with multicolored pairs of wings on their backs rode their “choppers” through the city streets.

“This year is very special. It’s time to remember the Stonewall rebellion, 50 years later, and to celebrate World Pride in our city. It’s marvelous. I’ve met people from all over the world,” the vice president of the Sirens, Jen Baquial, told EFE.

Authorities said they expected between three and four million tourists in the city for the Pride celebrations that kicked off last Thursday and will conclude Sunday night with a concert in Times Square and with a performance by pop icon Madonna at a minifestival of music on the banks of the Hudson River.

Also in evidence at the parade were the flags of many countries and cities invited to participate in the event - cities such as Bologna, Italy; Rome, Venice, Berlin - all candidates for future WorldPride events - and Copenhagen, which will host the 2021 event.

A few hours earlier in New York, the Queer Liberation March - an alternative to the “main” march - was staged with thousands of participants, although the alternative parade shunned the floats sponsored by corporations, marketing and the police presence at the official Gay Pride march.

Ann Northrop, one of the organizers of that march, told EFE that the struggle for equal rights for the LGBTI community has to continue and insisted that, despite the fact that the official World Pride events have included several protest events, that’s not enough.

“They did it because they’ve noticed that people are hungry” to continue the struggle, she said amid thousands of marchers who crowded onto the New York streets from Christopher St. in the West Village, where the Stonewall gay bar is located, to Central Park.

“Justice or big companies?” was the choice set before the public at the alternative march on Sunday, Bill Bobs, another organizer, told EFE regarding the event preceding the official Gay Pride parade, which is being sponsored by many large firms.