New York Police Division (NYPD) officers detained 10 individuals who staged a protest for Palestine in the course of the metropolis’s Pleasure March yesterday, June 30, briefly halting the procession only a block earlier than the Stonewall Inn.
Commemorating the fifty fifth anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, which protested a police raid of the eponymous homosexual bar, the historic procession has all the time been a website for political organizing. This 12 months’s occasion proved no totally different, as many individuals seized the chance to highlight points together with abortion rights, protections for trans group members, and truthful contracts for unionized employees. However by and enormous, Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza seemed to be probably the most urgent points on the minds of marchers and spectators. LGBTQ+ SWANA group Tarab NYC showcased a “Free Palestine” float, and plenty of people, together with 2024 Pleasure Grand Marshals Miss Main and Raquel Willis, confirmed solidarity with Palestine via flags, selfmade indicators, watermelon ephemera, and keffiyehs whereas continuing down the route from twenty fifth Avenue via the West Village.
A protest for Gaza within the second half of the march underscored the rising urgency for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Shortly earlier than 2:30pm, 11 activists with the Coalition of Fruits to Free Palestine (CFF), a group affiliated with Writers Towards the Struggle on Gaza, broke via the barricades lining Christopher Avenue to spray pink paint onto the Human Rights Marketing campaign’s (HRC) Pleasure float and hooked up pickup truck. Afterward, they obstructed the motorcade with a banner show that learn “No Queer Liberation With out Palestinian Liberation” and “Palestine Will Be Free.”
Lasting roughly half an hour, the demonstration got here after a rally in February at HRC’s annual Larger New York Dinner, throughout which activists demanded the nonprofit name for a ceasefire in Gaza and protested its monetary ties to weapons producers Northrop Grumman, which is listed as a “Platinum Associate” on HRC’s web site.
The group additionally distributed yellow leaflets criticizing “pinkwashing zionists” and “rainbow capitalism.”
“We stand with f-ggots preventing for the demise of empire. With d-kes burning ‘american’ and ‘israeli’ flags,” the flyers learn. These pamphlets additionally reference figures like Argentinian trans activist Cecilia Gentili, whose premature demise in February was just lately memorialized alongside those that have been killed in Gaza in an ACT UP motion at Hearth Island’s Trailblazers Park, and United States Air Drive service member Aaron Bushnell, who died in February by self-immolation in protest of US assist for Israel in its assault of Gaza.
“We stand in solidarity with each final Palestinian, right down to essentially the most unspectacular, essentially the most imperfect amongst them, lest a few of us neglect that none of them deserved any of this, that their deaths too ought to disgrace us into motion,” the textual content concluded.
Whereas many spectators vocalized their assist for the protest by chanting “Free Palestine” together with the activists, some bystanders criticized the motion. Ben Siggers, a spectator visiting from Baltimore who was standing on the identical block when the protest unfurled, informed Hyperallergic that he disagreed with “hijacking another person’s float.” Ayesha and Ishmael Mohammed, a pair from New Jersey, additionally shared related ideas concerning the interruption to the march, saying that they agreed with the protest’s trigger, however felt it was staged on the “unsuitable time.” One of the vital vocal objections to the demonstration got here from march volunteer employees member and trans rights advocate TS Candii, who was witnessed and recorded by Hyperallergic shouting “Fuck Palestine” in the midst of Christopher Avenue in the course of the motion.
“We’re at no cost Palestine. We stand with them, however we stand for peaceable protest,” Candii mentioned in a follow-up remark to Hyperallergic, criticizing the motion for “being disruptive and purposely stopping visitors.”
5 minutes after protestors refused march organizers’ request to maneuver alongside, officers took 10 of the demonstrators into custody as crowds of bystanders yelled, “Disgrace!” A consultant for the NYPD later informed Hyperallergic that seven of the activists obtained court docket summons on costs of disorderly conduct, whereas three had been arrested on costs of governmental obstruction and legal mischief.
Two of the arrested protesters, author and musician H. Sinno and novelist Kathleen Alcott, informed Hyperallergic that they had been held in a single day in Manhattan’s Central Reserving location “in stunning and inhumane situations,” describing an expertise mired with rodent infestation, verbal abuse and threats of violence, bodily assault, constant misgendering, and sexually express commentary about their our bodies.
When the procession resumed at round 3pm, many spectators who had witnessed the protest and arrests loudly heckled HRC’s float.
“Pleasure is protest and we welcome all voices in right this moment’s March. We respect the protesters’ proper to display whereas conserving the March secure and flowing for all individuals,” NYC Pleasure, the group that runs the procession, informed Hyperallergic in an announcement. HRC has not but responded to Hyperallergic‘s media inquiry.
Yesterday’s march, which ended early at round 4pm resulting from “inclement climate,” adopted a banner demonstration for Gaza on the NYC AIDS Memorial on early Friday morning. Organized by ACT UP and Jewish Voice for Peace upfront of President Joe Biden’s go to to the newly opened Stonewall Nationwide Monument Customer Middle, the motion concerned the show of two banners and dozens of wheat-pasted posters, calling on Biden to halt weapons shipments to Israel amid its ongoing assaults on Gaza.
Editor’s observe 7/2/24 10:30am EST: This text has been up to date with the names of two protesters who had been arrested.