Unicorns, not Uniforms! (Marching in St. Pats' for All this Sunday!)

A contingent from the coalition of LGBTQ & police accountability groups will be marching in the St. Pat's for All Parade in Queens this Sunday March 2nd.RSVP on Facebook! https://m.facebook.com/events/236582423196265 The parade begins at Skillman Ave and 47th Street. We'll be arriving at 12:30pm with a picnic. (We are arriving early to talk to press and do outreach!) The parade steps off at 2PM with speeches and opening remarks...

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Press release: Irish/LGBTQ Coalition Slams Bratton on Anti-Gay Parade

PRESS RELEASE - For Immediate Release - Feb. 28, 2014 Irish/LGBTQ Coalition Slams NYPD Commissioner’s Decision to Join St. Patrick’s Day Parade; Bratton Endorsement of Homophobia Taints Police-Community Relations. Marching in 'St. Pat’s for All' this Sunday, Coalition will call for withdrawal of uniformed NYPD & FDNY participation in Fifth Ave parade. Press availability for comment at ‘St. Pat’s for All’ parade: Sunday 3/2 from 1-2pm in Sunnyside, Queens: 47th Street, mid-block between...

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Hello progressives! NYC anti-gay parade boycott is now City Council policy.

Melissa! A progressive City Council has been so long coming. Great news today as the NYC City Council pulls the plug on its participation in the St. Patrick's Day parade. Nearly all Councilmembers have honored the long-standing boycott anyway, but the Council always had a banner and a few die-hard 'phobes on the march. This marks the end of politicians' watery "wishing the parade were inclusive" while also courting religious-right money by refusing...

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Round-up: "Irish grapple with gay rights in New York and Ireland"

Sometimes the BBC gets it right: Irish grapple with gay rights in New York and Ireland, 18 February 2014 Unlike his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will sit out this year's St Patrick's Day parade Gay rights has become a subject of intense debate in Irish communities on both sides of the Atlantic this month. It is perhaps a reflection of the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality and the rapidly...

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Calling the Commissioners

NYPD are not "participants", they're close comrades in the parade.Photo: DNAinfo.com Yesterday the Ad Hoc Committee to Ban NYPD & FDNY Participation in Discriminatory Parades -- the group that includes Irish Queers and many of the others who signed the initial request to Mayor de Blasio -- sent a letter to NYPD Commissioner Bratton and FDNY Commissioner Cassano. The letter asks them to prohibit uniformed NYPD and FDNY officers from marching...

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Religion & the City

Those who think of NYC as a place where the streets are so many miles of open-air forum for free expression and diversity... must not live here. This is an incredibly difficult and conservative place for conversations about accountable policing, preserving secular spaces, and supporting communities that don't toe the mainstream line. In this GCN editorial (and article reporting on some gay elected officials' mysterious refusal to get behind the queer community on the #$%^& parade issue) Gay City News pulls back the veil on how church &...

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In the press: Ireland rises against the NYC St. Patrick's parade and "time warp" homophobia

[These are in chronological order. Don't miss the broadcast clip at bottom!] 'Patrick's Day is not about sexuality' - Taoiseach Enda Kenny http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/patricks-day-is-not-about-sexuality-taoiseach-enda-kenny-30021187.html "The Taoiseach came under fire in the Dail for agreeing to participate in the famous Fifth Avenue Procession - which has been criticised for its ban on posters promoting LGBT rights...Mr Kenny was asked by People Before Profit TD if he would wear a badge symbolising the LGBT community. He responded by...

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Vintage video: 1991 & 1992 St. Patrick's parade

Lest we forget where this all began, here's video from the 1991 and 1992 NYC St. Patrick's Parade. 1991 is the year ILGO marched in spite of the ban, with Mayor Dinkins, as guests of a progressive AOH contingent. The experience was so awful that ILGO refused to march again without full status -- as a contingent of out queers marching in their own community's parade. (Since then, much of the Irish and Irish American community has overcome their homophobia.) The next year, 1992, was first of many in which our protests were attacked or quashed...

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GCN: Barely Taking a Breath, de Blasio Says “Nyet”

http://gaycitynews.com/barely-taking-breath-de-blasio-says-nyet/ Less than 24 hours after LGBT activists and their allies called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to bar uniformed city personnel from marching in the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade, they received a pretty firm no.  Asked by reporters on February 4 for his response to the activists’ letter, the mayor said, “I believe that uniformed city workers have a right to participate if they choose to, and I respect that right...

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Sign yourself on to DeBlasio letter!

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Press release: DeBlasio under fire

Feb. 4, 2014 MAYOR DE BLASIO UNDER FIRE FOR REMARKS ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE STATEMENT OF THE AD HOC COALITION AGAINST CITY PARTICIPATION IN DISCRIMINATORY PARADES Contact: Emmaia Gelman (917) 517-3627, emmaia.gelman@gmail.com Yesterday a broad-based community letter called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to direct NYPD and FDNY Commissioners to stop sending uniformed officers to the nation's largest anti-LGBTQ event—the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade. In response, the Mayor has ducked and punted, saying only that he won't march himself....

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UPDATED: LGBTQ and Allies Letter to Mayor on City Participation in Discriminatory Parades

Want to sign on yourself? Click here. Contact: Emmaia Gelman (917) 517-3627, emmaia.gelman@gmail.com 2/3/2014 Dear Mayor de Blasio: More than twenty years ago, the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization sought to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue and was excluded. In 1993, parade organizers used a court case to declare it a private, religious procession whose anti-gay message would be controverted by the presence of an identifiable Irish LGBTQ group—even though LGBTQ groups are welcome in St. Patrick’s Day parades...

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