NEW YORK — Inspired by the defiant spirit from which NYC Pride was born, 18 diverse LGBT community organizations will march together at the front of this year’s NYC Pride March on Sunday, June 25. The allied “Resistance” was formed in response to the attacks on the LGBTQ community by the Trump Administration, a complicit Republican Party, and other enemies of civil rights and social justice. The group is expected to attract a large number of protesters and celebrants.
Beginning in late February and throughout the spring, new and experienced activists negotiated with Heritage of Pride (HOP), the organization that plans NYC Pride, to ensure that The Resistance would be allowed to lead this year’s march. Despite initial pushback and several heated public discussions, HOP ultimately relented.
“Since the Stonewall Riots and the first pride march, LGBTQ rights–and indeed our very lives–have never been under siege like they are now under the Trump regime,” said Ken Kidd, a longtime New York City activist who conceived the plan for resistance groups to lead the march and who led the negotiations with HOP. “Every year, the March celebrates our victories in our fight for equality. This year, it must celebrate our ongoing commitment to keep the rights our community has worked so hard to achieve—and bond us together to expand on them. ”
Building on the momentum from the pride parade in Los Angeles, which activists turned into a resistance march; the Columbus, Ohio, Pride Festival, where refugees fleeing persecution will serve as grand marshals; and Washington, DC, where activists mounted their own alternative March for Unity and Pride, thousands of marchers will convert their frustration and anger at the president into a celebration of strength, perseverance, and community.
The diverse, multi-generational groups plan to employ chanting, singing, dancing, die-ins, and a wide array of props and visuals to express their resistance to a historic assault on LGBTQ rights.
The eighteen LGBT and AIDS groups confirmed by HOP to be marching in The Resistance are:
- Rise and Resist
- Gays Against Guns
- Lesbian Herstory Archives
- Judson Memorial Church
- Congregation Beit Simchat Torah
- Housing Works
- ACT UP
- Physicians for a National Health Program NY
- Gay City News
- Granny Peace Brigade
- Stop Mass Incarceration Network
- Health GAP
- Axios Eastern Orthodox LGBT Christians
- United Thru Action
- Refuse Fascism
- Indivisible Nation BK
- Peace Action Fund of New York State
- Democratic Socialists of America
