Defying Trump’s Orders, NYC Re-Raises Pride Flag at Stonewall
Activists and officials returned the rainbow flag to Christopher Park after it was removed at the federal administration’s directive.
New York politicians and activists hoisted a large Pride flag to the Stonewall National Monument’s flagpole on Thursday afternoon, February 12, in defiance of a federal directive to take down any flags or pennants that aren’t the United States flag or from the Department of the Interior.
It takes a lot to get New Yorkers to stand outdoors in subfreezing temperatures for more than an hour, but the Trump administration’s onslaught on an iconic gay rights symbol in the West Village mobilized a crowd to Christopher Park.
“Whose streets? Our streets! Whose park? Our park! Whose neighborhood? Our neighborhood!” chanted several hundred people, who spilled into Christopher and Grove streets.
National Park Service (NPS) employees had quietly removed the rainbow Pride flag on Monday, almost exactly a year after scrubbing multiple references to transgender and queer people from descriptions on its website of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising and the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ movement. On Wednesday, federal employees reportedly installed a US flag on the pole where the Pride flag had flown.
The move was part of the White House’s widespread campaign to whitewash American history in displays at museums and national historic sites, including the Smithsonian Institution and Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.
But the agency’s decision to pull down the Pride flag prompted a swift backlash from Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Governor Kathy Hochul, and dozens of Democratic leaders across the city, who immediately vowed to return it to its rightful place.
“Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it,” Mamdani tweeted on Tuesday. “I will always fight for a New York City that invests in our LGBTQ+ community, defends their dignity, and protects every one of our neighbors—without exception.”
Three days after the flag’s removal, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal organized an impromptu flag-raising ceremony at the site with nearly every elected official in Lower Manhattan, drawing several hundred activists and onlookers who spilled out onto Christopher, Grove, and West Fourth streets.
Their plan was to attach the Pride flag on a smaller aluminum pole, carry it toward the permanent flagpole in the center of Christopher Park, and affix it to the flagpole with several black plastic zip ties.
It did not go smoothly.
“Why are the politicians up there and the people are back here?” one activist shouted.
“History is not a f–ing photo-op!” another said.
A pair of activists approached the crowd of elected officials and had a brief discussion with them while some in the crowd chanted, “Raise the flag!” and “Do it proper!”
The officials slowly retreated toward the Christopher Street side of the park while activists took several minutes to cut the zip ties and lower the US flag, before threading the Pride flag through the halyard that attached the American flag and raising them together.
“I don’t know what happened,” Manhattan Assemblyman Tony Simone told Hyperallergic. “We didn’t want to take the US flag down. That wasn’t the goal. We wanted both of them side by side.”
A half hour later, both flags waved vigorously in the wind, satisfying much of the crowd, which headed across the street to the Stonewall Inn for happy hour.
Timothy French, a Bronx trans non-binary artist and drag queen, brought their own trans pride flag to the event. They told Hyperallergic that the Trump administration's attack on the gay pride flag was devastating, but nothing new.
“Today there's more understanding within the LGBTQIA+ community, but as society, especially in areas throughout Middle America, they don't know trans people,” French said. “We're just 1% of the population, and there's that lack of real-life exposure, so you have conservative media, you have the religious leaders, and so on that are demonizing the trans community when they don't really even know what they're saying.”
Before Trump’s second term, visitors to Christopher Park could sometimes find the Trans Pride flag flying alongside the Pride rainbow flag. But last year, caretakers were reportedly told that only the traditional rainbow flag, initially designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, was allowed.
“It's just another way to erase people in society and their right to exist and live their lives,” French said.
Newly elected State Senator Erik Bottcher, who represented the West Village and led the City Council’s LGBTQIA+ caucus, said the monument and its history were too important to the community to let the Trump administration attempt to erase their significance.
“When I was growing up in a small town in the Adirondack Mountains, I felt so alone, so hopeless, I didn’t want to be alive, but when I learned about Stonewall and its proud history, it gave me hope,” he told Hyperallergic.
Hoylman-Sigal said it was important for all New Yorkers to celebrate the site of the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
“I predict if [NPS] tries to take it down, we will return, but they may want to keep it up,” Hoylman-Sigal said.
Hyperallergic has contacted the National Park Service for comment.
Rhea Nayyar contributed reporting.
