NYC, San Francisco and other US cities capping LGBTQ+ Pride month with a mix of party and protest
The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reaches its rainbow-laden crescendo as New York and other major cities around the world host major parades and marches on Sunday.
The festivities in Manhattan, home to the nation's oldest and largest Pride celebration, kick off with a march down Fifth Avenue featuring more than 700 participating groups and expected huge crowds.
Marchers will wind past the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar where a 1969 police raid triggered protests and fired up the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The site is now a national monument.
In San Francisco, marchers in another of the world's largest Pride events will head down the city's central Market Street, reaching concert stages set up at the Civic Center Plaza. San Francisco's mammoth City Hall is also among the venues hosting a post-march party.
Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada are among the other major North American cities hosting Pride parades on Sunday.
Several global cities including Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo, held their events earlier this month while others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November.
The first pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
Pride celebrations are typically a daylong mix of jubilant street parties and political protest, but organizers said this year's iterations will take a more defiant stance than recent years.
The festivities come days after the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark June 26, 2015, ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that recognized same-sex marriage nationwide.
But Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have sought to roll back LGBTQ+ friendly policies.
Since taking office in January, Trump has specifically targeted transgender people, removing them from the military, preventing federal insurance programs from paying for gender-affirmation surgeries for young people and attempting to keep transgender athletes out of girls and women's sports.
The theme for the Manhattan event is, appropriately, 'Rise Up: Pride in Protest." San Francisco's Pride theme is 'Queer Joy is Resistance' while Seattle's is simply 'Louder.'
'This is not a time to be quiet,' Patti Hearn, Seattle Pride's executive director, said in a statement ahead of the event. 'We will stand up. We will speak up. We will get loud.'
Among the other headwinds faced by gay rights groups this year is the loss of corporate sponsorship.
American companies have pulled back support of Pride events, reflecting a broader walking back of diversity and inclusion efforts amid shifting public sentiment.
NYC Pride said earlier this month that about 20% of its corporate sponsors dropped or reduced support, including PepsiCo and Nissan. Organizers of San Francisco Pride said they lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast and Anheuser-Busch.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Budapest's pride parade: a humiliation for Orbán and a triumph for European values
In late 1980s Hungary, courageous environmental protests against an unpopular dam project played a part in the eventual collapse of the country's communist regime. Originally focused on protecting the quality of drinking water for about 3 million Hungarians, some of the largest demonstrations seen since the 1956 revolution came also to symbolise a wider rejection of one-party political rule. An era was coming to an end, as authority began to drain away. It would be premature to predict a similar fate for Viktor Orbán's self-styled 'illiberal' government, which presides over what the European parliament has described as a 'hybrid regime of electoral autocracy'. Mr Orbán has ruthlessly consolidated his power since becoming prime minister in 2010, not least through gradually exercising a suffocating hold across the media and civil society. But the extraordinary events of the weekend, after his government's attempts to ban Budapest's annual Pride parade, suggest a new vulnerability. Organisers had hoped that maybe 40,000 people would brave intimidation, possible fines and the controversial use of facial-recognition technology, after an amendment to Hungary's constitution allowed LGBTQ+ events to be designated a threat to children. In the event, on a scorching summer's day in Budapest, they estimated that between 185,000 and 200,000 may have turned up in solidarity. It was, by far, the biggest Pride event ever to be held in the city. Out on the streets were large numbers of first-timers, parents with sons and daughters, and demonstrators from across the mainstream political spectrum. The scale of this backlash points to a significant prime ministerial own-goal. Trailing his former ally turned bitter critic, Péter Magyar, by a substantial margin in polls, Mr Orbán chose to target the LGBTQ+ community, just as he has targeted migrants in the past. In attempting to become the first European Union leader to ban Pride, his principal aim was to rally support across the right, goad Brussels and set a polarising trap for Mr Magyar. But the outcome was the largest anti‑government demonstration since 2010, and a mass mobilisation in defence of the broader principles of freedom of assembly and minority rights. Mr Magyar, who did not attend the march, limited himself on Saturday to criticising Mr Orbán's perennial efforts to 'turn Hungarian against Hungarian, in order to create fear and divide us'. Eschewing the prime minister's culture wars, his Tisza party has focused campaigning relentlessly on living standards, healthcare and corruption. In a country that, on Mr Orbán's watch, has become one of the poorest in the EU, that is a sensible approach. But the size of the Pride turnout should stiffen sinews in Brussels if, as seems inevitable, Mr Orbán resorts to ever more desperate tactics to retain power. More than 70 MEPs took part in the march, and the equalities commissioner, Hadja Lahbib, was also in Budapest to meet civil society organisations. Overall, though, Brussels's response to Mr Orbán's provocation was constrained by a fear of being seen to interfere in the lead-up to next spring's election. That now looks like a misreading of the national mood. Freedom of assembly and non-discrimination are core, non-negotiable values that must be respected by any EU member state. As they passed in such numbers over Erzsébet Bridge, with the Danube below, Saturday's marchers made that point in unforgettable fashion.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
New York's elite is at war over the cost of their immigrant servant class
The upset victory of the Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani over the centrist veteran Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary New York City has many on the Left seeing the dawn of a new socialist era. But the election results show that the real class conflict in the Big Apple is not between the Haves and the Have-Nots, but between the Haves and the Have-Mores. Some factors in this election are unique to New York's ethnic mix. Mamdani won the Hispanic vote, perhaps thanks to a backlash against Donald Trump's deportation policies, and as the first potential South Asian mayor of New York City (born in Uganda, he is of Indian descent) he did well among Asian New Yorkers, particularly Muslims. What about income? The richest and poorest New Yorkers voted against him, as did the black middle class and working class. Mamdani's base is what has jokingly been called 'the Commie Corridor' in Brooklyn and part of Queens, where young white progressives have created a bohemian culture similar to that of college towns. Mamdani also did well among affluent New Yorkers in the tier below the very rich, as Michael Lange has pointed out in The New York Times: 'In tony, liberal neighbourhoods like Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, known for their tree-lines streets and multimillion-dollar brownstones, Mr Mamdani trounced Mr Cuomo by more than 35 points.' The claim that Mamdani won by campaigning on the issue of 'affordability' is hard to reconcile with the fact that he did better among upper-middle-class white voters than among working-class and middle-class black voters. But the definition of 'affordability' is subjective. Young hipsters in Brooklyn and affluent professionals in Manhattan may make more money than black janitors in the Bronx or white nurses' aides in Queens, but they feel that they are poor, because they have champagne tastes on beer budgets. Metropolitan professionals are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the super-rich, whether as employees of major business, finance, law, and media firms, as nonprofit staffers or professors whose institutions depend on the charitable giving of the wealthy, or as civil servants in cities that depend on taxing a small number of wealthy individuals and enterprises. Nevertheless, as I can attest, having lived in Manhattan for half a decade in the 1990s, many professionals seethe with envy of the rich. Even a six-figure income may not enable academics, journalists, nonprofit staffers, lawyers, or doctors to afford a townhouse on the Upper West Side, a weekend place in the Hamptons, or a cook and a French au pair. According to a recent study by SmartAsset, to 'live comfortably' in New York City a family with two children needs $318,406, more than £231,000, while a single individual needs an annual income of $138,570, compared to $75,000 for a single in Houston, Texas. No wonder New York is losing residents to Texas. The division between the metropolitan rich and metropolitan professionals plays out on multiple fronts: housing, transit, and domestic help. In cities like New York, even professionals making a few hundred thousand dollars a year cannot afford to buy one of the townhouses or luxury condos they covet in nice neighbourhoods. Instead, they are forced to pay crazy rents in order not to suffer the indignity of living far from Manhattan and commuting for an hour or more each day like lowly proles. The rich can Uber or Lyft their way everywhere, but that is costly for merely affluent professionals who may be forced to endure the forecast of hell that is the New York City subway system. But the biggest divide between the rich and the affluent has to do with servants. Truly rich households in America tend to be one-earner couples, in which the man is the sole breadwinner and the wife doesn't work (at least for wages; it can be exhausting to bark orders at the help all day). And in a reversal of the pattern for most of the last century, rich American women are now having more children than less affluent women in the US. In contrast, the typical professional-class household in cities like New York consists of two college-educated professionals, both of whom must work so that their joint income allows them to eke out a barely-comfortable existence in one of the priciest places on earth. If they have children, they must rely on paid child care. The truly rich can afford to pay Mary Poppins along with Jeeves quite well. But metropolitan professional households with children and two full-time working parents with professional careers cannot afford to spend much on nannies and maids. They may be progressive in their attitudes toward trans rights and DEI, but professional couples in big cities rely on a pool of low-wage, mostly foreign-born domestic workers who can be paid low wages in cash, with no payroll taxes, no benefits and no retirement security. This explains the panic among metropolitan professionals caused by Trump's deportations. Every illegal immigrant in the US could be deported and the rich in Manhattan and elsewhere could still afford not only maids and nannies but also drivers, tutors, personal shoppers, dog walkers, butlers, and personal yoga instructors, if they chose. But without cheap illegal immigrant labour, the precarious finances of many two-earner professional couples would collapse. One way to keep the wages of menial servants low enough for professional households to afford them is to let taxpayers pick up the tab for many of their expenditures. The public grocery stores in New York City proposed by Mamdani are for the nannies and maids and Uber drivers – not their professional class and rich employers, who will continue to shop at upscale stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. Better yet, if the maid can drop her children off at a publicly-funded daycare centre on the way to clean the professional couple's apartment, the taxpayer's assumption of her childcare costs makes it easier for her to survive on her paltry wages. To be sure, Mamdani has proposed raising the minimum wage in New York City to $30 an hour. But everyone knows that is not going to happen, making it safe for progressive New Yorkers to pay lip service to high wages and unions while paying their menial servants in cash off the books in the black market for labour. In this way, the benefits of cheap labour for elites are privatised while the costs are socialised. A century ago in the US, the non-Marxist crusade in favour of municipal ownership of water and electric utilities was called 'sewer socialism'. The 21st century Left has come up with something new: 'servant socialism'. Whether Mamdani can be elected mayor of New York City remains to be seen. But the intra-elite class dynamic seen in the Democratic primary will continue to be played out in New York and other plutocratic cities around the globe. What drives it is the desire of the ambitious professional-class Haves to live like the truly rich Have-Mores – at taxpayer expense, if that can be arranged.
NBC News
4 hours ago
- NBC News
Pride Month concludes with fewer corporate sponsors amid DEI pushback
Pride parades continued in major U.S. cities and in Hungary, but corporate sponsors decreased amid growing opposition to diversity initiatives. NBC News' Maya Eaglin reports on how Pride Month was celebrated nationwide as legislation and judicial decisions ruled against the LGBTQ 30, 2025
