New Yorker lawmakers and queer activists staged a lively demonstration on Thursday to re-hoist the rainbow flag at the Stonewall National Monument, after the U.S. government under President Trump had it removed earlier (TheColu.mn reported). The monument in Greenwich Village is regarded as a symbolic birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ movement — it was here in 1969 that the Stonewall uprising against police brutality and discrimination began.
More than 1,000 demonstrators gathered, marching with rainbow and transgender flags, banners, and loud chants, to demand the flag’s return as a visible symbol. Many saw the flag’s removal in 2016, at the time designated a National Monument by then-President Barack Obama, as part of a broader assault on the visibility and rights of the queer community under the current federal government in Washington.
“This is sacred ground”
Representatives such as Kelley Robinson, president of the LGBTQ+ rights organization Human Rights Campaign, described the flag’s removal as a direct attack on the community: “Two days without a flag is too long,” she said, emphasizing that the community must take action when the state fails to. “This is sacred ground,” Robinson continued. “I wasn’t there in 1969. But being here in 2026 and making it clear: you won’t erase us — that’s powerful.”
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During the action, the rainbow flag was initially pinned to the same flagpole as the U.S. flag that had been flown after the removal of the queer emblem. The mood on the plaza was emotional and combative — some demonstrators even wanted to remove the American flag entirely to display only the Pride symbol.
Trump’s Interior Department calls it a PR stunt
The U.S. Department of the Interior responded to the action with whataboutism: “Hundreds of families in New York City faced power outages during this year’s extreme cold, and corpses were found on the streets, while trash piles climbed so high they overshadow city residents. This is the New York City imagined by Mayor Mamdani and city officials,” the department stated. “While today’s political PR stunt is meant to distract from their latest deadly failings, it would be wiser to focus their time on clearing the garbage from the streets, preventing further avoidable deaths, and ensuring that people in New York City have power. This political performance shows just how utterly incompetent the officials in New York City are and how far they are from addressing the real problems facing the city.”
The newly elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat in opposition to the current leadership, had previously slammed the flag ban: “I am appalled by the removal of the rainbow flag from the Stonewall National Monument,” he wrote on social media. “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ movement, and no act of erasure will ever change that history or silence it.” (dk)
