City and state lawmakers packed into Christopher Park at the Stonewall National Monument on the morning of Feb. 12 for a “Hands Off Our Flag” rally against the Trump administration’s decision to remove the Rainbow Flag there earlier in the week.
The event came just hours before several state and federal lawmakers were planning to raise the flag yet again on federal land at the park, which has become the center of national — and even international — attention as outrage has continued to build since Gay City News first reported on the flag’s removal on Feb. 9. Against the backdrop of a large version of the Progress Pride Flag, elected officials delivered remarks alongside individuals representing non-profit groups and LGBTQ advocacy organizations.
Bronx Councilmember Justin Sanchez, who recently took office and serves alongside Ossé as co-chair of the LGBTQIA+ Caucus, kicked off the rally by declaring that the flag’s removal “is just not right.”
“The federal administration would rather erase us than build us up and show us what America truly is,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez was joined by his co-chair, Chi Ossé, who said it is the responsibility of the LGBTQIA+ Caucus co-chairs to protect the LGBTQ community.
“That’s something we will continue to do day in and day out,” Ossé of Brooklyn said, speaking alongside out lawmakers and allies, including City Council Speaker Julie Menin.
Two former co-chairs of the LGBTQIA+ Caucus, Crystal Hudson of Brooklyn and Tiffany Cabán of Queens, also denounced the flag’s removal at the rally.
“We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going anywhere,” Hudson declared. Cabán said the Trump administration is trying to destroy the LGBTQ community’s “collective memory.”
“But our roots are alive,” Cabán said. “We are the living proof that our roots are alive.”
Out state lawmakers on hand at the rally included Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Tony Simone and State Senator Erik Bottcher — all from Manhattan.
“This is not a fight that we have asked for,” Bottcher said. “But this is a fight that we will win, because we have been subject to persecution for thousands of years. We’ve always persisted. In the end, we always win.”
Glick, the first out state lawmaker in New York State, said the administration is mounting attacks on LGBTQ people and others in an effort to distract from what she described as “an authoritarian regime.” The Trump administration, she said, is trying to “tell a community that they are going to come after us and take us into the shadows from which we emerged.”
“We are not going back,” she said. “We have fought other attempts to make us feel small, make us feel the other, make us feel we don’t matter, that we don’t count. But we know the truth. They’re scared. They see their numbers cratering, so they want to go after marginal groups, whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s the LGBTQ community.”
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who accompanied Gov. Kathy Hochul during her visit to the Stonewall National Monument less than 24 hours before the rally, reminded the crowd of former President Abraham Lincoln’s quote: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
“And we are here because we are not a house divided,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “We are a house united.”
On the same day as the rally, city lawmakers were moving to pass a resolution “calling on the United States Congress to respect the true history and significance of national park sites, including the Stonewall National Monument.”
