今日吃瓜

Activists in New York have restored the Pride Flag at the Stonewall Memorial after it was controversially removed this week.

In a move of defiance against the Trump administration, who ordered it to be removed, it was restored in a ceremony at the site this weekend.

However, things didn’t go exactly as planned.

Pride flag flies at Stonewall once again

Earlier this week protestors gathered at the Stonewall Memorial in New York following new directives issued under the administration of聽Donald Trump.

The flag, which had been flying near the monument in Greenwich Village, was taken down by the National Park Service earlier this week. The agency confirmed the removal was in line with updated federal guidance, limiting the types of flags permitted on government-managed flagpoles to the United States flag, the Department of the Interior flag, and the POW/MIA (Prisoner of War/Missing in Action) flag.

It’s not the first attack Stonewall and the LGBTQIA+ community with the government previously attempting to erase the transgender community from the online Stonewall Memorial in February last year, continuing several months in July when they made similar moves to erase the bisexual community.

Following the removal of the flag, community members, LGBTQIA+ advocates and elected officials gathered to protest in Christopher Park.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

However just three days later they gathered to return the flag to its rightful place.

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Manhattan State Senator Erik Bottcher organised the re-raising of the flag as crowds gathered to see it returned.

Instead of the flag returning to its original place however, it was being raised on an alternate flagpole, to comply with government regulations, a move that left it essentially at half mast, displeasing many.

Two activists on the scene intervened, Jay W Walker and Josh Tjaden stepped in to ensure the Pride flag went to its rightful place at the monument.

鈥淥ur elected officials, though I love them, brought in their own flagpole and planted it in the ground in front of it, and their plastic pole was lower than that flagpole, so it resulted in our Rainbow Flag being lower than [the American Flag] and not on the actual flagpole” Walker told .

鈥淭he least we could do is to put our flag higher on this cord than the American Flag.鈥�

Also speaking to the outlet was Angelica Christina, the director of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative who said of the ceremony 鈥淚 feel so empowered to say my community showed up en masse.”

鈥淭o have our space invaded like this is criminal. And, of course, the person that is directing these sycophants to invade our home is a 34-time convicted felon himself. What today means is resilience and tapping into our LGBTQIA+ history.鈥�