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NYC-area officials raise Pride flag at Stonewall after Trump admin takes another down
By
Catalina Gonella
and
Giulia Heyward
Published Feb 12, 2026
Modified Feb 13, 2026
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Giulia Heyward / Gothamist
By
Catalina Gonella
and
Giulia Heyward
Published Feb 12, 2026
Modified Feb 13, 2026
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Hundreds of people gathered outside the Stonewall National Monument on Thursday to witness local elected officials and activists raise a Pride flag in the same place where federal officials removed one just days before.
The action was in defiance of the National Park Service, which took down its own Pride flag from Christopher Park — a small triangle of land in Greenwich Village and the only federally owned portion of the national monument.
The site commemorates the 1969 riots in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar adjacent to the park — broadly considered the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ movement.
National Park Service officials have cited recent guidance from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which states that only the “U.S. flag, flags of the DOI, and the POW/MIA flag” can be flown in spaces the agency maintains.
Until its removal by the National Park Service earlier this week, the flag had been trumpeted as the only “permanent” Pride flag installation on federal land. An American flag was installed this week in its place.
People cheered “Raise Our Flag!” as a Pride flag was placed back onto the flagpole on Thursday. Others brought signs or participated in chants. NYPD officers were on hand but did not interfere in the flag-raising.
“New York is a queer city. It’s a city with a ton of people of all genders and to try to take that away or pretend that doesn’t exist? We have to fight back and we have to be visible,” said Jamie Bower, a queer West Village resident who was in attendance alongside her long-term partner.
Bower said she was touched by the fact that hordes of people were present, saying that: “Defiance on every level is important. On one level, it’s just a flag, but on another level, it’s our identity.”
A message from the Park Service to Gothamist described the flag-raising as a political stunt. It did not say if it planned to intervene or take the flag down, but said the flag had been removed earlier in the week to conform to longstanding guidance. The Park Service said it remained committed to the history of the site through other exhibits, programs and educational institutions.
Mark Ricciardi — a drag queen who performs at multiple venues in the city as Zeta Jones — attributed the huge turnout to people being “activated because we see inequality within the world.”
“We’re the local girls, y’know? A lot of people who support us are also going to be affected by this. Small steps are always a part of a bigger recipe – and this is a small step of a really bad one,” Ricciardi added.
And while Bower, Ricciardi and others said they were gratified by such a large turnout, they lamented what they considered to be a rollback of protections they previously fought for.
“It feels surreal. I feel like we’re in a thriller movie — it doesn’t feel real,” said Laura Albert, a Brooklyn resident who said she frequented Stonewall after she first came out.
Albert said she expected local elected officials to continue to advocate for the flag’s presence at Stonewall.
“If it ends here, it’s going to end everywhere,” she said.
Public figures present at the demonstration included former City Comptroller Brad Lander, state Sen. Erik Bottcher and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
“President Trump is using national landmarks and symbols to attack communities who have fought very hard for the civil rights that we all deserve,” said Jack Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s grandson, who is currently running for a seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District.
Schlossberg said that he thinks “local communities should have the ultimate say” on whether the Pride flag should be on display at their federal monuments.
“To be fair, we’re in uncharted territory right now where we’ve got the federal government openly declaring symbolic war on different cities around the country, including this community right here, which is something we’ve never had before,” he said.
Ahead of Thursday’s gathering, Steven Love Menendez, an activist who was involved in the years-long effort to include the flag in the park, said it’s an important symbol to display at such a significant site.
“No one's going in that park wanting to take a photo with an American flag behind them. It doesn't represent the queer movement. There's American flags everywhere,” Menendez said.
Last year, the Trump administration also erased references to trans people from the Stonewall National Monument's webpage, sparking public outcry. The site currently references “lesbian, gay, bisexual” people, without mentioning trans people or using the term “queer” more broadly, on its pages describing the monument’s history.
The history of Pride flags at Stonewall
For years, activists had pushed the federal government to honor Stonewall’s history with a Pride flag on federal property — running into bureaucratic battles and finding mixed success.
In 2016, then-President Barack Obama established the Stonewall National Monument, the first dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights. The monument includes private and city property, as well as the 0.12-acre Christopher Park, which the city handed over to the federal government.
In the following months, the National Park Service made plans to raise a Pride flag at a flagpole just outside the park's eastern entrance, according to an E&E News report that cites emails acquired under the Freedom of Information Act. Menendez told Gothamist it was broadly understood that the flagpole was on federal land, and local activists celebrated the achievement of such recognition at a federal site.
The National Park Service bought a Pride flag, and a ceremony to honor its arrival at the park was slated for Oct. 11, 2017, the emails cited by E&E News show. But just five days before, top officials at the Department of the Interior ordered it taken down, E&E reported at the time. The trove of emails shows the exchange between National Park Service officials as they tried to put forward an explanation for the reversal.
Finally, they agreed to let the flag fly, saying the sidewalk was outside the park and was therefore city property, not federal land. Joshua Laird, the commissioner of the National Park of New York Harbor, told the Associated Press at the time that the federal government had maintained the flagpole but didn’t actually own that spot.
The NPS donated the flag to the city Parks Department, which now maintains the flag and flagpole outside the park, according to city officials. That flag remains over the monument, despite this week’s controversy.
Menendez said he and other local activists still thought it was important that there be a flag on federal land. That’s when he first came up with the idea to place 250 small Pride flags around the park, including one large Pride flag inside the park, as an installation during the month of June for Pride Month starting in 2018, he said.
He said he received the necessary permits from the NPS and a large flag he installed inside the park flew on a temporary pole he placed there every Pride Month from June 2018 through the end of the first Trump administration in 2020.
After President Joe Biden was elected, Menendez said, he saw an opportunity to have a permanent flag installed. He said he reached out to his National Park Service contacts in early 2021.
“It was the first time they said yes to have it on non-Pride Month, just to have it ongoing, so I had to request a permit every month to keep that flag flying inside the park,” he said. “So that was kind of the first sort of permitted semi-permanent flagpole. I call it the activist flagpole inside the park.”
The National Park Service provided a Pride flag with its logo for the display, still on a temporary flagpole, which first flew in June 2021, Menendez said.
Then, in September of that year, the National Park Service sent another activist who’d been advocating for the flag, Michael Petrelis, a letter announcing it would be installing a permanent flagpole inside the federal park.
“We are also delighted to advise that the park received a generous donation from the National Park Foundation and a portion of those funds have been committed towards the installation of a flagpole that will complement the historic iron fence surrounding the federally owned Christopher Park,” the letter read. “This new flagpole will be permanently located front and center in the beautiful gardens inside Christopher Park.”
The letter does not specify what change in policy, if any, allowed for the permanent Pride flag in the park. Another flag dedication ceremony was planned for June 2022, where officials installed a flag, and where Love has periodically replaced it as needed. That's the flag the National Park Service ultimately removed this week.
In a Facebook post that month, the National Parks of New York Harbor celebrated it as “the first Pride flag to be flown permanently on federal lands.”
“For many years, the rich histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans have been erased through punishing laws and general prejudice. The National Park Service is committed to telling the complex and diverse histories of all Americans,” it wrote.
“If there's only one place in the whole United States of America that it's important to have a rainbow flag upfront, it’s the Stonewall National Monument,” he said. “It holds very important significance.”
This story has been updated with new information.
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Catalina Gonella
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Giulia Heyward
Giulia Heyward is a breaking news reporter on the Day-Of desk. She previously worked at NPR, as a breaking news reporter, and the New York Times, as a reporting fellow on the national desk. Her work has also appeared in CNN, The Atlantic and Politico. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or more securely on signal at 917-715-1458.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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