N.Y.C. Officials Reinstate Pride Flag at Stonewall After Federal Removal

Hundreds of people attended a rally on Thursday to re-raise the flag, setting up a defiant response to the Trump administration’s assault on diversity initiatives.

A group of New York elected officials gathered on Thursday to replace the Pride flag that was removed from the Stonewall National Monument after a directive from the Trump administration, mounting a defiant response to the government’s assault on diversity initiatives at a federal site honoring the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.

The plan to re-raise the flag in the center of the small park outside the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village had been widely publicized on social media, and hundreds of spectators cheered as its rainbow colors made their way back up the flagpole under a cloudy winter sky.

“We have brought the flag back to a sacred site,” Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president, told the crowd through a bullhorn.

The Pride flag had been removed after the Department of the Interior issued federal guidance that addressed the display of “non-agency” flags in the national park system. It was not clear exactly when the flag was taken down, but employees of the Stonewall Inn said they had noticed it was gone on Monday morning.

On Wednesday afternoon, federal employees raised an American flag on the pole where the Pride flag had once flown. By sunset on Thursday, both flags were waving side by side.

The group of New York officials, including Mr. Hoylman-Sigal and Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, hung the Pride flag below the American flag, where it flapped awkwardly against the pole.

As they turned to leave the park, the crowd began to shout “higher!” Then several people from the crowd, including well-known activists and a nonbinary high school student, stepped in to briefly remove the Pride flag and then raise it again next to the American flag.

The two flags then flew together, and the crowd cheered.

Mariah Lopez, a transgender activist, said the rainbow flag’s unauthorized return was in keeping with the history of the monument, which commemorates three days of protests and street clashes between L.G.B.T.Q. activists and the police after a June 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street.

“You know, Stonewall was a riot,” Ms. Lopez said.

Nearby, Timothy French, 47, a drag performer from the Bronx who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said the return of the flag had made them feel emotional. They said they had recently been assaulted on the subway and had a transgender friend who was hospitalized after an attack.

But to see so many L.G.B.T.Q. people “standing together, united,” Mx. French said, made the heaviness of those incidents feel momentarily far away.

“We, you know, are part of a bigger picture,” they said. “We represent everyone in this country. This is a landmark for our community that’s important to so many people across the world.”

It was not clear how long the newly raised rainbow flag would be allowed to remain at the site, which is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

The flag’s quiet disappearance was met with outrage from elected officials and many New Yorkers earlier this week. At a news conference on Thursday, Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, criticized the secretive way the flag appeared to have been removed, saying it “was taken in the middle of the night.”

“There was no discussion,” she said on Thursday. “There was no warning. It was taken.”

When asked this week about the removal, the National Park Service pointed to the federal memo, which was issued on Jan. 21. The agency said in a statement that “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on N.P.S.-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”

“Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance,” it added. The agency said it continued to preserve the historic significance of the Stonewall National Monument through exhibits and programs.

On Thursday, Ms. Menin said she and other lawmakers had sent a letter to the National Park Service demanding the return of the flag. The Council also approved a resolution that called on the federal government to respect the significance of historical sites like Stonewall.

“Stonewall is a sacred site in this city,” she said. “It is sacred ground for civil rights and sacred ground for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.”

The Stonewall National Monument was designated in 2016 by former President Barack Obama. The 7.7-acre site encompasses the Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park and several nearby streets and sidewalks. The site has become well known around the world, and L.G.B.T.Q. events and organizations in several countries, including Britain, Australia and Germany, have been named in its honor.

The original Pride flag debuted in 1978, according to the Park Service’s website, with each of its eight colors symbolizing an aspect of the L.G.B.T.Q. community’s experience.

Since President Trump’s inauguration last year, his administration has mounted a broad assault on what it views as diversity initiatives, and has frequently enlisted the National Park Service to police the language used or the symbols displayed at public sites.

In the last year, the Park Service has removed an exhibit on George Washington’s ownership of slaves from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, dismantled a plaque about climate change at the Muir Woods National Monument in California, and stopped showing films about immigrant and female textile workers at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.

The administration also ordered Pride flags to be removed from American sites overseas, through a State Department directive issued last year that said only American flags could be flown at U.S. Embassies and Consulates worldwide. That represented a shift from the Biden administration, which at times displayed Pride and Black Lives Matter flags.

The removal of the Pride flag was the second time in the last 12 months that the Trump administration has targeted Stonewall, which is the first historic site in the United States dedicated to the nation’s L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.

Soon after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Park Service removed the word “transgender” from prominent sections of the monument’s website as part of the administration’s push against diversity initiatives. That move prompted hundreds of people to gather in Greenwich Village to protest what they saw as an attack on the symbolic heart of the gay rights movement.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, State Assemblywoman Deborah Glick described the Trump administration as “a petty, meanspirited and cruel regime” that had “at its heart hatred and a desire to divide people.”

“This is just one symbol of their attempt to tell a community that they are going to come after us and chase us into the shadows,” said Ms. Glick, who is the first openly gay member of the State Legislature. “We are not going back.”

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