NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch was pictured watching the NYC Pleasure March from the sidelines Sunday, weeks after slamming the exclusion of LGBTQ cops from strolling in full uniform within the parade.
About 75,000 individuals walked within the 57th annual Pleasure March Sunday afternoon, making their means down Fifth Avenue, turning onto Eighth Avenue after which up Seventh Avenue, the place they handed the historic Stonewall Inn — the website of the violent 1969 police raid and rebellion that kick-started the homosexual rights motion and impressed the march.
However uniformed NYPD officers haven’t been among the many marchers since 2021, when NYC Pleasure organizers Heritage of Pleasure first banned all active-duty regulation enforcement from marching with their service weapons –citing tensions between regulation enforcement and the LGBTQ group within the wake of the George Floyd protests.
As NYPD rules require uniformed officers to be armed, members of the Homosexual Officers Motion League opted to skip marching ever since.
At this yr’s parade, New York Metropolis’s high cop was noticed watching behind metallic barricades alongside a gaggle of officers protesting the ban on cops marching of their uniform.
Police pictured behind Tisch held indicators studying “Homosexual cops won’t be erased from Pleasure,” and “Pleasure March: Admit One,” together with an NYPD badge.
Earlier this month, Tisch slammed the exclusion of LGBTQ cops from strolling with their weapons throughout Manhattan’s Pleasure March and as an alternative walked in a Pleasure parade by way of Queens that allowed armed officers.
“As soon as once more, they banned NYPD officers from marching in full uniform later this month,” Tisch stated of the Manhattan organizers throughout the June 7 Queens march.
“That call is as hypocritical as it’s a slap within the face to the New York Metropolis Police Division and to the spirit of Pleasure.”
In the meantime, NYC Pleasure March organizers, who paradoxically picked the theme “For All of Us” for the 2026 march, went all in — naming the group Gays Towards Weapons as one in every of its 5 grand marshals this yr.
Gays Towards Weapons activist Cathy Marino-Thomas, 65, advised The Publish that the gun ban was additionally resulting from ongoing trauma among the many homosexual group following the Pulse nightclub bloodbath in June 2016.
Marchers briefly paused the parade to carry a staged “die-in” in entrance of the Stonewall Inn to commemorate the 49 lives misplaced on the Pulse Bloodbath 10 years in the past.
“They’re holding area for the individuals who have been killed within the Pulse nightclub. They’ll not march in Pleasure, so these of us have taken day trip of their celebration to carry area for the people who we misplaced. It’s on individuals’s minds consistently,” she stated.
Gays Towards Gun marchers dressed all in white with shawls overlaying their faces and held images of the 49 Pulse victims, whereas additionally holding {a photograph} of anti-ICE protester Renee Good, who was killed earlier this yr by regulation enforcement in Minneapolis.
Some notable figures who marched within the parade embody Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James, Congressional candidate Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams — with the latter two posed for a photograph with Tisch.
Celebrities like Bowen Yang, a grand marshal, and Megan Stalter have been additionally noticed within the sea of individuals.
The 2026 theme “For All of Us” was taken from a quote broadly attributed to Stonewall veteran and historic LGBTQ activist Marsha P. Johnson, stating in full — “There isn’t a satisfaction for a few of us with out liberation for all of us.”
