A very important part of standing up to the police is trusting the people you’re locking arms with. I was lucky on Sunday, June 28, to find myself surrounded by New York’s queer community as I joined the second annual Queer Liberation March, an event organized as a direct protest of the corporate parades that have become the norm in the five decades since the Stonewall rebellion against police harassment.
As we marched toward Washington Square Park at the end of the event, I saw New York Police Department (NYPD) officers push people down and beat them in the street, a painful echo of history. The entire experience was a harrowing reminder that queer liberation — a future where LGBTQ people are free not just from discrimination, but from all the oppressive systems that hold everyone down — must include police abolition among its goals. What follows is not an authoritative account of the events that followed, but simply a report of what I witnessed, bolstered by outside reporting.
This year’s Queer Liberation March started at Foley Square and made its way up to the Stonewall Inn, the site of the famous protests that are the reason we celebrate Pride in June. Organized against by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, the march was specifically framed as a protest for Black trans lives and against police brutality. Coming after a month of protests for Black lives, it was New York’s second chance this month alone to honor the work of people like Marsha P. Johnson, the Black trans woman remembered as a hero of Stonewall.
I was with three friends toward the front of the march, and after the protest passed Stonewall, we sat on a nearby stoop to watch it flow by, eventually rejoining near the end as it headed to Washington Square Park. We were within sight of the park’s legendary arch when things started to get heated.
Police were attempting to make an arrest, and protesters were trying to stop them, demanding “Let them go!” in a chant, all reminiscent of de-arrest efforts we’ve seen in places like New Orleans. As police attempted to move through the crowd, I followed behind, seeing people rinsing one another’s eyes as if they’d been pepper-sprayed. On Waverly Place, NYPD officers tried to force us off the street, batons out and swinging at people’s ankles. In the melee, I kept having to help people up after the police pushed them down. One person was practically being crushed by an officer as several of us attempted to get them out from under his knee.
Gothamist reported that legal observers on the scene reported four arrests total and 10 people pepper-sprayed; police told NY1 there were three. The arrests that apparently incited the clash were reportedly over graffiti; in the midst of the blockade, I heard someone try to start a “graffiti is art” chant.
In a statement emailed to Teen Vogue Monday night after the publication of this piece, Sergeant Mary Frances O’Donnell attempted to highlight NYPD's "tremendous strides to improve and redefine our relationship with the LGBTQ communities” and then identified three people by name and address who were arrested on a variety of charges, claiming the initial arrest was for allegedly vandalizing an NYPD vehicle. O'Donnell went on to allege that several officers “were assaulted and had department property removed from their persons," but also claimed that there was “in no way ‘a clash’ between police and protesters," calling it “simply a false narrative.”
I can still feel the cops' hands on me. In videos online, I can see myself being pushed and shoved by police. (I’m physically fine, just horrified by everything that unfolded.) I can see the cops going wild; in one video, an officer uses a nightstick to knock down someone already on their knees with their hands raised above their head. And I can see protesters embodying the spirit of the chant, “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe.” Eventually, people regrouped back by the arch and then pushed the remaining police presence back down Waverly, following the same path they had just pushed through to make an arrest.
According to NY1, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is calling for an investigation into the day’s events. That, at least, is a welcome change from Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeting about celebrating the Black trans activists “who built the movement” as NYPD was brutalizing those carrying their legacy forward. And with the city budget set to be finalized tomorrow, June 30, the aftermath of yesterday’s ugliness adds to the pressure from activists camped outside City Hall to hold city leaders to a billion-dollar budget cut for NYPD. It’s not enough, but it’s a start on the path toward a New York where Black people, queer people, and Black queer people can protest, live, and walk down the street without fear of police terror.
I never expected yesterday to turn out like this. I had even put some enamel pins back on my vest for the first time since the protests began, thinking there’d be no risk to having the sharp bits stuck in the denim collar. I didn’t even write the National Lawyers Guild’s mass defense hotline phone number down on my arm, as I’d done for weeks prior. I’d been lulled into a false sense of security by NYPD’s seemingly defensive posture after an initial wave of violent crackdowns on protests.
I had been so excited for the march. This is my fifth Pride since coming out of the closet. I did the big corporate parade in Chicago in 2016 with bandmates; the next year, I covered a direct action that stopped the parade for 12 minutes. In 2018, I was too depressed with what I had come to understand Pride parades to represent to participate in any festivities. But last year, my first Pride in New York, the Queer Liberation March was a revelation and affirmation of how many other people felt like I did.
I had hoped the 2020 edition of the same march — which didn’t have to compete with the usual corporate parade due to a COVID-19 cancellation — would feel like a once-in-a-lifetime moment, harkening back to the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, in 1970, when the aftermath of Stonewall created an explosion of LGBTQ organizing in the city. It was the first time Pride went from a riot to a march; in the intervening years, it’s turned into a parade, but people like the Reclaim Pride Coalition are trying to return us, as a community, to our roots in political resistance and rebellion.
With their batons, pepper spray, and physical shoving, NYPD pushed me harder than any march ever could to feel that history. Their actions solidified my belief in queer liberation — a future where all LGBTQ people are not only free to live as who they are and be truly safe from discrimination, but a society where all people, LGBTQ people included, are free from all the hate, the exploitation, and the power that holds us down, no matter the color of their skin or their Pride flag. It’s a future where the Black and Brown trans women like Marsha and Sylvia Rivera are more than icons of the movement; they are the people freed through our fight.
There is no place for the police in that future. Just as cops are not welcome at Pride because of their history targeting us, they are not welcome in a liberated queer future because their primary function is to maintain a status quo that victimizes LGBTQ people. Our history as queers in this country is one of criminalization through anti-sodomy and anti-crossdressing laws, one of being forced into the margins of society. We were shunted into places like mafia-run bars where police could regularly bust up the joint — the exact situation that sparked the Stonewall riots.
That isn’t something that can be erased overnight. In the last 10 years, survey after survey has seen LGBTQ people report misconduct and mistreatment in interactions with police. The institution of policing is geared to be as hostile toward LGBTQ people as our entire society was until quite recently. And while visibility and civil rights wins have changed public perception of LGBTQ people, the much-needed institutional change that would actually provide the liberty we deserve is slower, as it is for every community held down by these systems.
As long as the police exist, they will threaten queer lives and queer liberation. No amount of rainbow-painted cop cars will change that. And while imagining a future where police and prison are abolished can feel intimidating because of its uncertainty, there is also an immense potential waiting in those unknowns. The fear I choked back facing down the cops was a visceral reminder that I’d much rather live in a world where the resources that provide for their badges and batons go toward keeping people alive, not keeping them afraid.
It will take a lot of work to create that future. But, for me, yesterday was a reminder that people are ready and willing to keep doing this work.
Not long after I got home from the march, a massive storm hit the city. As the rain slowed, one of my roommates looked out the window and noticed a massive rainbow forming. We went up to the roof, where we could see it stretching horizon to horizon over Brooklyn. Standing there, I started to cry at what felt like some kind of biblical covenant from some kind of god, promising that we may someday rise above the flood waters of pain and horror, as vibrant and colorful then as we are now, but free.
Editor's Note: This story was updated on the morning of June 30 around 10:15 a.m. with comment from NYPD's Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information that was submitted Monday night after publication.
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