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. This isn't much to be celebrated: no truly progressive politician has marched since the parade banned the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization from marching with its banner in 1991, and Mayor Dinkins stood alongside ILGO only to be pelted with beer cans.

The parade is explicitly anti-gay and discriminatory. Because the NYC Human Rights Commission said it violated the City's human rights law in 1992, parade organizers sought deliberately to define it as a private and religious event in order to continue to exclude LGBTQ people. Indeed, John Dunleavy, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade chairman, infamously compared LGBTQ marchers to the KKK being allowed to march in an African-American parade in Harlem.  

Police and firefighters march by the thousands, making up most of the parade. (Did you think it was a celebration of Irish pride? That’s so 1992.) Their uniforms clearly convey that the City endorses the march. The Mayor's cavalier dismissal of the City's human rights law today compounds that effect. We get it: we LGBTQ people don't matter.

When NYPD and the FDNY wear their official work uniforms and march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, they diminish their sworn respect for the laws of this great city and violate the spirit of the city’s human rights law. Employers make rules about uniforms and that’s the issue in dispute – the wearing of official uniforms which conveys to the world that this parade’s bigotry is endorsed by our city government.

But the law protects us, and we will insist that the Mayor uphold it. We are told that we can march if we don’t identify ourselves in any way. If that is the way we are to be treated, then City personnel should march as individuals with their counties but not in City uniforms.

While we protest the rising homophobia in Russia, Nigeria and elsewhere around the world, we seek to end homophobic discrimination here at home as well. The St. Pat’s Parade has a right to its anti-gay march under the constitution. But the City and all supporters of human rights must do everything we can to isolate it.

The coalition’s full letter to Mayor de Blasio with scores of signatories from the City, civic, activist and legal communities is here: http://irishqueers.blogspot.com/2014/02/deblasio-letter.html

STATEMENT OF ALAN LEVINE, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS COOPERATING ATTORNEY:

“The NYC human rights law is a protection for LGBTQ people and others who have been subject to discrimination, some overt and some  more subtle but equally insidious. It says that the City cannot reduce minority groups' access to services like policing and public safety. Federal case law also affirms it: the police cannot do their job where they are viewed 'more as oppressor than protector.’ The NYPD and FDNY's participation in the parade is hugely questionable under the law—and the fact that the Mayor doesn't seem concerned with remedying this problem is as disturbing legally as it is morally and politically.

If the guarantee  of respect for equality and dignity that is embedded in human rights law and the constitution means anything, it surely means that uniformed police – who are charged with equal enforcement of the law – should not be parading down a public street conveying a message of contempt for one of our City’s communities.”

STATEMENT OF SEAN BARRY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF VOCAL-NY:

"We see discriminatory policing every day that targets LGBTQ people, youth of color and other marginalized communities. When police put so much energy into marching in a parade that openly discriminates, and the mayor condones it, it sends the wrong signal about whether the culture of the NYPD is really changing. There’s no doubt Mayor de Blasio recognizes that the parade’s policy is wrong. We hope that he reconsiders his decision regarding the participation of uniformed city workers in the parade to reflect a consistent policy of inclusion and respect for LGBTQ New Yorkers.”

STATEMENT OF JOHN FRANCIS MULLIGAN, IRISH QUEERS

“We have spent the past 22 years at the sidelines of the St Patrick’s Day Parade being spat on, threatened and marginalized. Initially homophobia was an Irish community problem, but changes here and in Ireland have done away with much of that early tension. All that's left are the NYPD and FDNY, who make up most of the marchers in the nation's biggest parade of hate. The intention is clear—they're not just marching, they are the message. We can't make them not be bigots but we can invoke the law. It is illegal for them to march in their official capacity.”

STATEMENT OF AMANDA LUGG, DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY, AFRICAN SERVICES COMMITTEE

“New York City is supposed to be a haven for all of us, with a human rights law to move us out of a long history of unequal treatment and abuses at the hands of police. But every year we see the sea of city uniforms marching on Fifth Avenue in a display of -- at best -- total disregard for a portion of the community. The bitter irony is that our government is working against gross anti-gay laws in Nigeria, Uganda, and elsewhere, and such bigotry at home shamefully undermines that work.”