Pride flag removed from Stonewall National Monument in NYC
By Jesse Zanger
A large Pride flag has been removed from the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village.
The National Park Service said it did so under guidance from the Department of Interior, which cautioned the National Parks Service that non-agency flags could not be officially displayed.
“Under government-wide guidance, including General Services Administration policy and Department of the Interior direction, only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions. Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance. Stonewall National Monument continues to preserve and interpret the site’s historic significance through exhibits and programs,” the National Park Service said in a statement.
The flag came down Sunday night or Monday morning, according to Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
“You can actually see the footprints where, perhaps in the dark of night, park officials entered and removed the flag, and now it’s gone,” he said.
“Deliberate and cowardly attempt” to erase history
The Stonewall National Monument is the nation’s first dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights and history. It was designated as a national monument in 2016. The Greenwich Village monument commemorates the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, sparked by police raids at the Stonewall Inn in June, 1969, which set off three days of protesting and rioting.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was outraged by the flag’s removal.
“New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history,” Mamdani wrote on social media.
“First the Trump Administration worked to erase transgender history from the Stonewall Monument and now they have secretly removed the pride flag — a shameful attempt to erase our LGBTQ history. I will not let this administration rollback the rights we fought so hard for,” Gov. Kathy Hochul posted.
Sen. Charles Schumer called it a “a deeply outrageous action that must be reversed right now.”
The move drew immediate criticism from City Council Speaker Julie Menin.
“Stonewall is sacred ground. It is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the removal of the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument is a deliberate and cowardly attempt to erase that history. This is an attack on LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, and we will not stand for it. Our history will not be rewritten, and our rights will not be rolled back,” Menin said in a statement.
Menin fired off a letter to the acting director of the National Parks Service, asking for the flag to be restored.
“The events that took place [at Stonewall] catalyzed a global movement for dignity, equality, and freedom — guiding principles upon which our nation was founded,” Menin wrote. “The Pride flag has long flown as as a symbol of that struggle and of the resilience of a community that continues to fight for its basic rights.”
“I just think it’s extremely unfair and it’s just really stomping on that entire purpose,” tourist Maddie Bordeaux said.
Hoylman-Sigal said he’ll put the flag back with a group of politicians.
“This movement was founded in standing up to authority and standing up for our communities civil rights,” he said.
CBS News New York has reached out to the National Park Service to find out what specifically might happen to anyone raising the flag on their own, and we haven’t yet heard back.
Stonewall National Monument previously altered
It’s just the latest change at the Stonewall National Monument. Last February, references to transgender and queer people were removed from the Stonewall National Monument as a result of an executive order President Trump signed on his first day in office calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female. In addition, the letters T and Q were struck from the LGBTQ acronym in various places on the website, replaced with “LGB rights movement” and “LGB civil rights.” Transgender flags were also removed from the monument.
“Bad news for the Trump administration: these colors don’t run. The Stonewall Inn & Visitors Centers are still privately owned, their flags are still flying high, and that community is still just as queer today as it was yesterday. While their policy agenda throws the country into chaos, the Trump administration is obsessed with trying to suffocate the joy and pride that Americans have for their communities,” Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf said. “For over a year, they’ve been on a witch hunt, targeting rainbow crosswalks, pride flags, Black Lives Matter murals, and throwing a tantrum about a Super Bowl performance they couldn’t control. But they will fail. We will keep showing up at Stonewall, for each other, and being out and proud. There’s nothing the White House can do about that.”
“The Pride flag was removed from Stonewall for one reason: to further erase queer and trans people from public life. Stonewall marks a moment when queer and trans people fought back and demanded dignity — its very existence poses a threat to an administration hellbent on employing state violence against anyone who does not look, pray, or love like them,” Tyler Hack of the Christopher Street Project said. “The 1969 Stonewall Riots, on Christopher Street, showed us that queer and trans people can’t be erased — because the more they tried to silence us, the louder we got. Our history is not theirs to erase. We are resilient, and we will not be shoved back into the shadows.”
