Three days after the Trump administration removed a Rainbow Flag from the Stonewall National Monument, defiant activists hoisted the Rainbow Flag once again in front of a jam-packed crowd of fed-up LGBTQ community members who flooded the area surrounding Christopher Park.
The flag re-raising ceremony, while ultimately successful, took a dramatic turn from its original plan. For days, elected officials — including Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Manhattan State Senator Erik Bottcher — vowed to raise the flag during a 4 p.m. event on Feb. 12. Those elected officials indeed brought a Rainbow Flag attached to a thin flagpole and placed it next to the flagpole where the original Rainbow Flag was located, but the new flag did not get attached to the actual flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument — and it was only flying at about half-staff.
The elected officials left the flag in place and walked away, leaving the audience groaning in disappointment and prompting several activists, including Jay W. Walker and Josh Tjaden, to walk up and actually install a Rainbow Flag onto the flagpole — with scissors and all.
Minutes later, the Rainbow Flag went up and sat just inches above the American Flag on the same flagpole after the activists finished raising the new flag.
“Our 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,” Jay W. Walker, who was among the activists who raised the flag, told Gay City News moments after the flag went back up. “The least we could do is to put our flag higher on this cord than the American Flag.”
The flag re-raising ceremony marked the latest chapter in a dizzying week of developments stemming from the Trump administration’s removal of the Rainbow Flag that was first installed in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden. Gay City News exclusively reported on the flag’s removal on Feb. 9 after National Park Service officials said the flag was removed due to “government-wide guidance” stipulating that “only the US flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags” can be flown “on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”
The National Park Service did not immediately respond to Gay City News’ request for comment after the flag was re-installed.
