Heritage of Pride Parade to march on Sunday as Reclaim Pride Coalition says the event does not represent the ‘spirit of Stonewall’

One will be a parade with glitter, go-go dancers, corporate floats blasting disco music and hundreds of thousands of people, flanked by cops and barricades. The other will be a protest featuring homemade banners, political chanting, an old-fashioned rally in the park, volunteer security guards (and glitter, though less of it).

The fact that both Pride marches will be traveling in opposite directions through New York City on Sunday while marking the same occasion – the 50th anniversary of the uprising at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 that sparked the modern gay rights movement – is as much a metaphor for a clash of ideas as it is a logistical fact.

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This year what will probably be the biggest queer celebration in New York City history will consist of dueling marches – the gigantic, official annual Pride march with all the celebratory floats, fueled by big business sponsors and a breakaway march designed to be a grassroots protest not only for the cause of civil rights but against the over-corporatization of the main parade.

The bigger parade, titled Heritage of Pride Parade, will carouse from uptown to downtown Manhattan and combines its celebration with World Pride, the international LGBTQ event hosted by a different country each year. Organizers expect up to 4 million people to descend on the city for this month’s Pride events, culminating this weekend.

The rival, bare bones Reclaim Pride event will stomp the route of the original march for queer rights that evolved out of the rebellion against a police raid on the city’s Stonewall Inn in 1969 – and will go from that downtown bar, which still operates and was made a national monument by Barack Obama, uptown to Central Park.

“The annual Pride parade has become a bloated, over-policed circuit party, stuffed with 150 corporate floats. This does not represent the ‘spirit of Stonewall’ on this 50th anniversary year,” a statement from the Reclaim Pride Coalition organizers said.

The statement added that the event did not address the urgent continuing needs of the queer community “still under daily attack by the Trump administration and in countries around the world”.

Organizers have called the alternative event the inaugural Queer Liberation March. It intends to shun policing by the New York City police department and instead provide its own security via volunteer marshals.

“It’s a clash of values. What happened at Stonewall in 1969 changed my life and we’re going to take that spirit into this new century. There’ll be no sponsors, no uniformed police, no floats,” said Bill Dobbs, an organizer of the Queer Liberation March.

Leaders of Heritage of Pride and the Reclaim Pride Coalition had held talks about changes to the official annual event. But they were unable to agree on a compromise, said Dobbs.

The Queer Liberation March plans to hew closer to the model of the annual lesbian march, which traditionally takes place on the last Saturday in June, the day before the official Pride parade.

“When I look at the dyke march I see an amazing, radiant swath of women, it’s just fantastic,” said Dobbs.

The lesbian, or self-described dyke march, has always been a breakaway, unofficial march that differentiated itself from the Pride parade by being a more political, unsponsored hybrid between celebration and demonstration. In more recent years another march, for greater transgender rights, has also taken place in June.

“We fundraise in the community and we’ve been an alternative space for 27 years,” said Alex Tereshonkova, an organizer of the lesbian march, adding: “I just don’t think there’s a place for Heritage of Pride any more.”

Undaunted, Heritage of Pride is putting on 25 events, with singer Grace Jones headlining one party and Melissa Etheridge another that she described in a statement as promising “a truly momentous evening of love, pride and community”.

The official Pride parade always begins with dozens of leather-clad lesbians of all shapes, colors and ages roaring ahead of the glitzy floats on their motorcycles, in the traditional “dykes on bikes” display. And official Pride parade “grand marshals” are people or organizations known for campaigning for LGBTQ equality, such as Billie Jean King and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

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New York drag queen, performance artist and DJ Lady Bunny said she plans to attend both the official Pride parade and the Reclaim Pride march. She will be on a float at one and speak at the rally at the other. In the mid-80s she started the Wigstock drag queen festival in the city’s Tompkins Square Park as a pointed and “gritty” alternative to what she saw as the already too-conventional annual Pride march in Greenwich Village.

“The parade has become more and more corporate as the years have gone on,” she said, noting ironically that “back in the day most companies wanted nothing to do with us”.

Meanwhile Open Secrets, part of the Center for Responsive Politics research group, has accused some companies publicly supporting Pride while also donating via political action committees to members of Congress who oppose the Equality Act, legislation that aims to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and other services.