The Greenwich Village rainbow crosswalk, just steps away from the Stonewall Inn, is getting a fresh coat of paint Friday night ahead of Sunday’s Pride march, which is expected to draw millions of attendees.
The repainting has become something of an annual Pride tradition to help honor the site many consider to be the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. This year’s event takes on added significance amid ongoing federal attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and the Trump administration’s attempts to remove references to Pride from government literature and property.
Along with censoring government websites, the Trump administration has pulled funding from a variety of programs that embraced or provided services to the LGBTQ+ community.
Crosswalks themselves have become a battleground. Since last summer, the administration has been pushing cities to strip rainbow flags and other art from their streets. The U.S. Department of Transportation has framed them as roadway distractions. In other states, like Florida, officials have obliged.
New York’s rainbow crosswalk was first painted at the intersection of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue in 2017. Decades earlier, in June 1969, police raided the nearby Stonewall Inn, a popular gathering place for gay New Yorkers. The patrons fought back, setting off a series of riots.
The following year, on the anniversary of the incident, organizers staged a march on what they called Christopher Street Liberation Day. Those events were the first into what would eventually become a national LGBTQ+ Pride movement.
Earlier this year, New York officials faced off against the Trump administration in a fight over a different rainbow flag near the Inn.
In February, the National Park Service removed the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument, a small park just steps away from the crosswalk, and replaced it with an American flag. At the time, the agency said that it was following a federal directive that limited the flags flown at national parks to the POW, Department of the Interior and United States flags.
Civil rights groups and local officials immediately pushed back, and days later, hundreds of protesters gathered at the monument to watch city officials raise a new Pride flag in the park.
A coalition of LGBTQ+ and preservation groups also filed a lawsuit, calling the decision to remove the flag “arbitrary and capricious.” The suit noted that the Interior Department’s policies allow flags that speak to a national monument’s historical context.
Two months later, the Trump administration backed down. Under a new settlement, the National Park Service said it would fly the Pride flag at the site along with the American and National Park Service flags.
“This court settlement means that Trump blinked,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said at the time. “He backed down and the flag’s going to continue to fly.”
