New York City will host 4 million visitors this week to celebrate World Pride for both a celebration of advancements in LGBTQ rights and a call to action in the face of anti-LGBTQ policies enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

New York has been designated the site for World Pride this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, 1969. The annual gay pride parade on Sunday will coincide with parades in cities around the world.

The opening ceremony takes place on Wednesday with a benefit concert at a Brooklyn arena, and festivities conclude Sunday night with a concert on the Manhattan waterfront featuring Madonna.

The anniversary commemorates the moment when patrons of a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn rose up in defiance of police harassment, leading to a national and worldwide movement for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other queer people. </s> A man walks on steps covered in rainbow colors for Pride Month at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on June 15, 2019 in New York City

Advertising Read more

New York (AFP)

Four million people and a sea of rainbow flags: that is what organizers of New York's "World Pride" parade expect this week for events marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the gay rights movement in the United States.

Many want the vast gathering to act as a show of strength for the LGBT community at a time when homophobia is again on the rise in the country.

The six-day festival will feature concerts, exhibitions, movie screenings, theatre shows and workshops as the city pays homage to those who took part in the 1969 Stonewall riots, a week-long protest against the police's constant harassment of the New York gay community at the time.

Just a year after the riots in June 1970, New York staged its first ever Gay Pride parade celebrating the diversity of the LGBT community, an event that would spread to other cities and eventually around the world, even though homosexuality remains banned and punished in a number of countries.

"What we did was end invisibility. People know who we are now. You can't try to create myths anymore. They know who we are," said Mark Segal, 68, who was at the riots outside the Stonewall Inn in 1969.

"They know us. They turn on TV, they see us. They read about us in their newspapers... We're not invisible anymore. You can't erase us anymore. That chance ended long ago," he said.

- Grace Jones and Madonna -

World Pride 2019 will officially kick off on Wednesday with a benefit concert in Brooklyn hosted by Whoopi Goldberg and featuring Cyndi Lauper and Chaka Khan as headliners.

On Friday, a large crowd will gather outside Greenwich Village's Stonewall Inn where on June 28, 1969 hundreds of gay and transgender people pushed back against the latest police raid on the establishment, sparking six days of unrest.

The weekend celebrations will feature concerts by Madonna and Grace Jones, with the festivities winding up with a giant World Pride Parade on 5th Avenue. It will be the sixth edition of World Pride, which began in Rome in 2000 and brought together droves of LGBT people from across the world.

New York's Gay Pride is regularly one of the largest such events globally, but for this year's milestone anniversary, authorities expect an additional two to three million visitors to attend.

- Extremist threat -

"It's going to be huge," said Cathy Renna, spokeswoman for the organizers of the parade, which is renowned for its risque and outlandish costumes.

That means the police will be out in force, protecting a community which saw 49 of its members gunned down in a shooting in the Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida three years ago, and fears that prejudice is on the rise.

"Our thinking changed after the Pulse night club attack," said John Miller of New York's counter-terrorism police force, who noted the "increasing threat from right-wing extremists who could also have been targeting the LBGTQ community."

Many in the gay community blame President Donald Trump for fueling extremist sentiment.

A new survey published Monday revealed that the number of Americans aged 18 to 34 who said they are comfortable interacting with LGBT people had dropped to 45 percent in 2018 from 53 percent a year earlier. The number was 63 percent in 2016.

"These numbers are very alarming and signal a looming crisis in discrimination," the head of the Harris Poll, John Gerzema, told USA Today newspaper.

"It's even more important to be here in the current political climate," said Jessica Inserra, 42, a Los Angeles-based comedian celebrating in New York.

- Too big? -

If proof was needed that Gay Pride is no longer a small, niche event but a massive draw to the wider public, one needs look no further than the corporations lining up to sponsor it and the celebrities, politicians and members of the police and fire services who are joining the parade.

Some 70 global giants are sponsoring this year's event, from L'Oreal to Macy's and Danone to Morgan Stanley, bumping the parade's budget up to $12 million, spokeswoman Cathy Renna said.

But to some activists the whole event is bloated, and a far cry from the original rebellious spirit of the early Gay Prides.

They are organizing a rival parade, dubbed the Queer Liberation March, which is stripped of celebrities and sponsors and expected to draw tens of thousands of participants.

"Pride is not for sale," said Bill Dobbs, one of the alternative march's organizers. "It has lost its direction."

Renna, however, said the sheer size of the festival showed how far the movement has come.

"I don't long for the battle days when there were 5,000 people marching and we could get beat up," she said.

"The fact that four million people are going to show up is, to me, one of the most powerful statements we could make."

? 2019 AFP </s> In this Wednesday, March 27, 2019, photo, a participant checks in as she arrives for a meeting of the Reclaim Pride Coalition at the Church of the Village in New York. Activists who believe New York City’s annual LGBTQ Pride march has become too commercialized are staging an alternative march the same day. The two marches through Manhattan streets will take place Sunday, June 30, the last day of a month of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

NEW YORK (AP) — One of the biggest celebrations of LGBT pride in New York City history will culminate Sunday with not one, but two processions through the streets of Manhattan, after dissidents who believe the annual parade has become too commercialized decided to split off with their own march.

Both parades cap a month of events marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, when patrons of a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back against a police raid and sparked a new era of gay activism and visibility.

Some 150,000 people are expected to participate in the NYC Pride March, with hundreds of thousands more lining the streets to watch as New York hosts WorldPride for the first time.

Organizers of the insurgent Queer Liberation March say they expect 10,000 or more at their event, which they say will have a protest vibe.

The main Pride march, the dissidents say, has strayed too far from its roots as a ragtag liberation demonstration celebrating an act of resistance. They complain that today’s march is dominated by corporate floats and is too heavily policed by the same department that raided the Stonewall in 1969.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill apologized this month for the Stonewall raid, but organizers of the alternative march deemed the apology too little, too late.

The upstart queer march is scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m. at the Stonewall Inn and end with a rally in Central Park.

The larger NYC Pride March will step off at noon with corporate sponsors including T-Mobile, MasterCard and Delta Air Lines. It will also pass by the Stonewall Inn before concluding in the Chelsea neighborhood. A related closing ceremony in Times Square will feature a performance by Melissa Etheridge.

There are 677 contingents marching in the larger parade, each of which had to register months in advance. Police barricades will keep marchers separate from the throngs of cheering spectators, as they do at other large New York City gatherings like the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Those barricades are one of the things that have upset participants in the Liberation March, who say anyone will be welcome to join their procession.

“In the original marches, the whole point was that anybody could join in,” said one of the organizers, Ann Northrop. “You could walk off the sidewalks and into the street and everybody was welcome, and that no longer applies.”

Reclaim Pride supporters also claim that the presence of so many corporate floats in premier spots forces grassroots contingents to the back of the line.

Charles King, the CEO of Housing Works, an AIDS advocacy organization that’s handling the finances for the Reclaim Pride Coalition, said marchers from his group were placed so far back last year it was completely dark by the time they finished parading.

“The question is, what is this about?” King said. “Is this about our liberation? Or is this just one more commercial activity, like the Macy’s (Thanksgiving) parade?”

And, backers of the Liberation March say, the NYC Pride March can simply be too festive, letting celebration drown out anger over continued bigotry toward LGTBQ people.

“I love Pride. I first marched in Pride in 1979. But I think that right now there is more than a celebration that needs to be had for the Pride parade,” said Tom Viola, executive director of the theater world charity Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS, which has donated $25,000 to the Queer Liberation March. “We need to acknowledge not only our victories; we need to mourn our losses, and we need to take a strong stand against those who would diminish or demean us.”

But the main march has grown much too large to be staged without security precautions or corporate support, said Cathy Renna, a spokeswoman for NYC Pride.

NYC Pride’s annual budget for the march and some two dozen other Pride month events is about $12 million, including mandatory payments to the police department.

“The reality is that those sponsors and partners help the march happen and help make it free for tens of thousands of people,” Renna said.

“I’m not nostalgic for the bad old days, to be totally honest,” she said. “The reason we’re having these discussions is because so many people have come out. Because there’s been so much progress. Are we begrudging that?”

Supporters note that the main Pride parade still has a notable protest element. Past marches have seen colorfully costumed dancers sharing the route with groups protesting violence against transgender people or a lack of AIDS funding.

“This is a debate that has existed for as long as Pride has existed,” said James Fallarino, a member of the executive board of Heritage of Pride, which stages the main march. “Our community has had to deal with a lot in the last 50 years, and we have always found a way to unleash our anger while at the same time celebrating who we are and our diversity and our unapologetic pride.”

Activists also staged an alternative New York City march in 1994, accusing official parade organizers of downplaying the AIDS crisis, among other issues.

The staggered start times should allow people to participate in both marches, which is what Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum plans to do.

“I believe there are many different ways to express the feelings that we have at this particular moment in history 50 years after Stonewall,” said Kleinbaum, the pastor of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which serves the LGBT Jewish community, and a grand marshal of the Pride parade in 2007.

Kleinbaum said her congregation will have a presence at each march Sunday.

“I think there’s room for both,” she said, “and we need to not create circular firing squads.” </s> NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City will host 4 million visitors this week to celebrate World Pride for both a celebration of advancements in LGBTQ rights and a call to action in the face of anti-LGBTQ policies enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

New York has been designated the site for World Pride this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, 1969. The annual gay pride parade on Sunday will coincide with parades in cities around the world.

The opening ceremony takes place on Wednesday with a benefit concert at a Brooklyn arena, and festivities conclude Sunday night with a concert on the Manhattan waterfront featuring Madonna.

The anniversary commemorates the moment when patrons of a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn rose up in defiance of police harassment, leading to a national and worldwide movement for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other queer people.

LGBTQ people will celebrate their many accomplishments toward equality in the five decades since, including winning the constitutional right to same-sex marriage through a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2015.

But advocates are also alarmed about losing those gains.

The Trump administration has banned transgender people from the U.S. military, cut funding for HIV and AIDS research, supported the right of medical providers and adoption agencies to deny services to LGBTQ people, and aborted plans to gather data about sexual orientation and gender identity in the 2020 census.

“I don’t know what we have to celebrate. Right now I would love to feel that I have more pride than I have at present,” said Larry Kramer, the playwright and founder of Act Up, which fights for AIDS research and legislation.

Despite advances in civil rights, 32 states lack non-discrimination protections against LGBTQ people, according to the Human Rights Campaign, and 1.1 million Americans and 37 million people worldwide live with HIV/AIDS, according to U.S. government statistics.

“Today our biggest problem is our inability to be united and to fight back in a strong way,” Kramer, 84, told Reuters in an interview.

Trump issued a statement of solidarity on June 1 to begin Pride Month, saying his administration has launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality, while rolling back protections at home.

“Trump alternates between saying we’ll be good to you and then dismantling all sorts of programs,” said Richard Wandel, a longtime gay rights activist. </s> BROOKLYN - The stars are as bright as the Rainbow Carpet at Barclays Center Wednesday night.

It was the Opening Ceremony for World Pride 2019. Only five other cities have hosted World Pride. New York is the first American city to do so.

A-listers like Billy Porter walked the Rainbow Carpet. The Tony and Grammy award winner dazzled in another one of his show-stopping outfits.

“Pride is always a time when the community comes together,” said Porter. “Right now, we have to remember our strength in numbers and our strength in unity.”

Porter is one of many celebrities who participated in a benefit concert. Proceeds go to several organizations: the Ali Forney Center, Immigration Equality and SAGE. The groups support and advocate for the LGBTQIA+ movement.

“Opening ceremony is a once in a lifetime event to kick off World Pride,” said David Studinski, the co-chair of NYC Pride.

The host of tonight’s event was Whoopi Goldberg, while the show was headlined by Cyndi Lauper

“Sometimes it’s a little scary to think how you’ll be received when you come out but just know the greatest thing you can ever do is choose yourself,” said actress Angelica Ross, when asked what advice she would give young people today wrestling with coming out.

New York City was awarded World Pride this year, in large part because June 2019 coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the riots at the Stonewall Inn when police raided the bar. The uprising is considered the birth of the modern gay rights movement.

“I’m unbelievably grateful to be here tonight to be an openly transgender black woman living my best life and I know people died for me to have the right to stand here tonight,” said actress Laverne Cox

World Pride culminates on Sunday with the Pride March. Millions are expected on the parade route. Just as there is an opening ceremony, the closing ceremony will be in Times Square Sunday evening. </s> It’s been one heck of a Pride Month in NYC, and we haven’t even reached its pièce de résistance: the parade. The NYPD finally apologized for the 1969 Stonewall raid, Pose returned for Season 2, and Taylor Swift dove headfirst into allyship with an anti-“shade” single and a political plea. July is right around the corner now, but the party’s far from over: There are still a host of Pride events on the horizon, supreme among them the NYC Pride March.

The Pride March is a time to celebrate queer identities, increase visibility of the community, and demand full and continued equality for LGBTQIA+ people. Part protest, part party, it’s the grand finale of Pride in New York City -- and this year, the whole world is watching.

For the first time, WorldPride has made its way to the US -- NYC, to be specific -- and the timing is no coincidence. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, often considered the catalyst of the modern gay rights movement, and the world wants to join the celebration. With WorldPride in town through the end of the month, the NYC Pride March is elevated from an already-huge Pride tradition to the world’s most significant Pride event this year.

On the last Sunday in June, people from around the world will flood Manhattan to sing some songs, wave some flags, and shed light on the important issues facing the LGBTQIA+ community. However you identify, this historic celebration is one of 2019’s can’t miss events. Here’s everything you need to know about the 50th annual NYC Pride March. </s> As the annual Gay Pride Parade gets ready to hit the New York City streets, take a look back at the festive parades of years past. </s> Gearing up for what’s on track to become one of the biggest NYC Pride celebrations to date, Pride Island has secured a star-powered lineup for its third-annual concert.

The two-day festival at Manhattan’s Pier 97 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots with help from LGBTQ icons Grace Jones and Madonna. They’ll be joined by some international drag queens, ballroom stars and pop performers who are sure to bring the realness.

"We’re planning an action-packed weekend of live performances that will build upon the excitement of what Pride attendees know as Pride Island, for our biggest and most inclusive year yet,” Pride Island director Jose Ramos said in a statement.

The first Pride Island hit Pride Week in 2017 and marked a change from the traditional “Dance on the Pier” party that was held during the Pride March for nearly three decades. A spike in popularity and attendance helped transform it into an annual LGBTQ festival. The festival, previously held at Pier 26, moved to Pier 97 at Hudson River Park in 2018 to prep for the larger-than-average crowd expected for the historic 2019 Pride March.

"I couldn’t be more excited to perform in front of my LGBTQIA+ friends and the community that’s supported me for so many years during WorldPride 2019," 70-year-old Grace Jones said in a statement. Jones, who’s been an LGBTQ icon for decades, headlines the festival on Saturday, while “Vogue” star Madonna is set for Sunday, after the march.

Get to know the performers before they hit Pride Island.

The supermodel, actress and singer is considered one of today's greatest gay icons.

The Harlem-born R&B artist is behind the popular “WTP” track featuring ballroom house queens that’s racked up nearly 3 million views on YouTube since its 2018 release.

One of the most famous queens in Brazil, Pabllo Vittar became the first Grammy-nominated drag queen at the 2018 Latin Grammy Awards. She received a nod for "Sua Cara,” a track released that same year with Major Lazer.

The pop singer that topped Spotify playlists in 2018 with her breakout song “Heart to Break” has garnered a solid LGBTQ fan base. In a 2018 interview with HuffPost, the singer said she hopes her music attracts fans, rather than her transgender identity. “I just hate the idea of using my identity as a tool,” she said. A Pride Island release describes her style as somewhere between ‘90s American pop and ‘80s European disco.

Afro-Latina performer Amara La Negra broke into the spotlight last year with a little help from “Love & Hip Hop: Miami.” She appeared on the series and opened up about her struggle to find a place in the music industry where she could celebrate her culture.

The New York City DJ has played residencies at some of the most notable local clubs, from The Pyramid Club to BoyBar and the shuttered Limelight.

The DJ is set to spin “classic dance floor hits,” according to a release.

The NYC DJ released a sampling of his Pride Island set on SoundCloud.

The singer who helped the city’s underground ballroom culture find its place in the mainstream spotlight in the ‘80s with the release of “Vogue” will “perform a couple of songs” to close out Pride Island following the Pride March. She most recently performed a surprise set at the Stonewall Inn on New Year’s Eve, during which she spoke out about spreading love. “If we truly look and we truly take the time to get to know one another, we would find that we all bleed the same color and we all need to love and be loved,” Madonna told the crowd. </s> June is Pride Month, and here in New Hampshire, the LGBTQ community has a lot to celebrate. Not only are we observing the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City, which birthed the modern-day LGBTQ rights movement, but we are also commemorating the 10-year anniversary of same-sex marriage in the Granite State, which was legalized ten years ago this month.

Today, it’s very hard to imagine a state in this country without marriage equality, or one where sexual orientation is not a protected status. Or where LGBTQ pride isn’t just felt, it’s purchased. Over the last decade, Pride has become synonymous with corporations making their logos more colorful and marketing rainbow tote bags to consumers. But its origin, which dates back to 1969 after decades of strife, is much darker than a celebration, and it’s not about businesses looking for the queer dollar: Pride was a protest that fundamentally changed LGBTQ activism.

It starts in the 1940s with World War II, a war that gave many men and women generous room to explore their same-sex affections. Facing the day-to-day uncertainty of war, members of both sexes adopted more masculine and feminine roles for entertainment and pleasure. In the years following the war, America began its dream anew by purchasing prefabricated homes, stylish cars, and gearing up for the Red Scare. Although known for spreading fear about potential Communist threats, the Red Scare also targeted anyone perceived to be homosexual, and removed them from government jobs and military service by order of President Eisenhower.

The 1950s and '60s brought the rise of McCarthyism, conversion therapy, and anti-LGBTQ sentiments. Seeking safety, some LGBTQ Americans found sanctuary in bigger cities. The Stonewall Inn, located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was a mafia-owned bar that catered to marginalized communities with watered down drinks and payouts to the NY police department.

But on June 27, 1969, a group of trans people of color – who existed in violation of NYC’s crossdressing ordinance – fought back against their arrest and constant mistreatment. The police lost control of the bar’s patrons in this routine raid, and what happened next would make history. The hundreds of people in the bar quickly turned into thousands in the streets in a demonstration against police abuse. The police eventually barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn for hours to hide from the protesters. The protests continued for several nights.

The Stonewall Riots are what Pride originally commemorated. Over the years, it has led to the establishment of nationwide Pride events that unapologetically, fiercely, and proudly remember the riots through public celebrations of the LGBTQ community.

Here in New Hampshire, one of the nation’s smallest states, there will be a whopping six pride celebrations in the month of June this year. This includes outdoor festivals in Concord, Claremont, Portsmouth, Conway, Nashua, and Manchester, as well as Rochester’s yearly celebration in August.

This is wonderful, and I’m as excited as any gay that there are so many opportunities to go enjoy my community in beautiful weather. But I urge everyone to remember the history of Pride and those who have still not been liberated. There are too many people in the community who helped birth the LGBTQ movement and yet who are unable to take part in Pride celebrations.

We must remember the gender non-conforming. People of color. Those who are undocumented. The incarcerated. People with physical disabilities. The financially insecure. And those that have passed on years before their time.

As Pride month wraps up, we need to hold space for those whom this celebration is still inaccessible. As a white transgender woman who has some level of passing privilege, I encourage all who participate to take inventory of their own privilege and actively think about who or what is missing from the picture: How can someone be pulled in? Is this my time to share, or is it time to uplift someone else? At this event for LGBTQ people, were voices of our community explicitly centered? Do I celebrate Pride in a way that negates others' lived experiences or presumes my experience reflects that of others?

I hope that years from now, we look back and think to ourselves that we can’t imagine how in the past, not every member of the LGBTQ community was fully integrated and thriving here in the Granite State. I hope we still celebrate and remember the origins of celebrating Pride. But it’s going to take some work. Who’s with me?

Palana Belken is the Trans Justice Organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire.
New York City begins the 50th Annual World Pride festival, expecting to draw four million people over six days.