Irish Queers Protest At NYC Parade

BOSTON: LGBT Groups March For First Time In St. Patrick's Day Parade

Via the Boston Globe:

History marched through South Boston on Sunday as gay organizations took their place for the first time in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Joining them in front of hundreds of thousands of green-clad revelers was Mayor Martin J. Walsh, the first Boston chief executive to walk the route in two decades. “I’m very excited,” Walsh said just before stepping off under a light, cold rain. “We can finally move beyond the issue of inclusiveness.”

Walsh, who tried unsuccessfully in 2014 to negotiate the inclusion of a gay rights group, announced last week that he would walk the snow-shortened route from the Broadway MBTA station to Pleasure Bay because organizers had invited OUTVETS, which includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender veterans.

The former mayor, Thomas M. Menino, had consistently boycotted the parade because its organizers from the South Boston Allied War Veterans, backed by a US Supreme Court ruling, refused to allow gay groups to participate. But on Sunday, politicians were a major, can’t-miss part of the festivities. Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito were among them.

RELATED: Irish Queers will be staging their annual protest in New York City tomorrow despite the first time ever inclusion of a single LGBT group. Visit their Facebook event page.

NEW YORK CITY: Guinness To Return As Sponsor Of St. Patrick's Day Parade

 Via the Wall Street Journal:

Guinness has decided to resume sponsorship of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue after dropping out last year, sparking criticism from gay activists who want a broad boycott because of what they call the organizers’ discriminatory policies. Diageo PLC, the parent company of Guinness, cited parade organizers’ decision to allow one gay group to march this year as a prime factor in Guinness’s decision. In September, the parade organizers announced that Out@NBC-Universal, a group of gay employees at NBC, would be permitted to march under its own banner. “While there is still work to be done, we are pleased that the parade organizers have taken steps to allow the LGBT community to be represented,” Diageo said in a statement. A spokeswoman for Guinness didn't respond to a request for comment beyond the company’s statement. Heineken U.S.A. also withdrew its sponsorship of the parade last year. A spokeswoman didn’t respond Friday to an inquiry; the spokeswoman said two weeks ago that a “decision had not been made” at that time.

When Guinness pulled out last year, Bill Donohue launched a boycott campaign that ultimately went nowhere. Heineken also dropped its sponsorship of the 2014 parade, but its not yet known if they will follow Guinness back to this year's event. A spokesman for Irish Queers has expressed "disappointment" with the decision by Guinness.

NEW YORK CITY: Irish Queers Cast Side-Eye On Parade Rule Change

NYC-based Irish Queers are unimpressed with today's rule change for the 2015 St. Patrick's Day Parade.

We welcome this cracking of the veneer of hate, but so far Irish LGBT groups are still not able to march in our community's parades. The fight continues. This is a deal that was made behind closed doors between parade organizers and one of their last remaining sponsors, NBC. It allows NBC's gay employees to march, but embarrassingly has not ended the exclusion of Irish LGBT groups. The parade organizers have said, astoundingly, that we "can apply" in years to come.

To the extent that parade organizers have changed their tune, it's the result of Irish Queers' many years of organizing, which led to last year's refusal to march by Council Speaker Mark-Viverito and others, and Mayor de Blasio, the withdrawal of major corporate sponsors and escalating criticism of uniformed city workers marching in the Parade. We welcome this small victory, but our call remains the same -- the parade must be open to Irish LGBT groups, not "in subsequent years" but now. (We remember too well how parade organizers used fake waiting lists to bury our applications before.)

Irish Queers To Protest St. Patty's Parade

From the Facebook page of Irish Queers:

Join Irish Queers in protesting the 5th Ave St. Patrick's Day parade which for over twenty years has banned Irish GLBT groups from marching in the parade with our own banners. This year numerous elected officials from Ireland and New York are refusing to march in the parade because it is such an embarrassment. But thousands of uniformed NYPD cops and firefighters still march in their uniforms which sends the wrong message to GLBTQ New Yorkers, especially those who are already at risk of being targeted for harassment by the police. Join us on the parade sidelines! We'll have banners, hot beverages, and snacks.

The protest will take place from 10:30am to 12:30pm on Monday on the west side of Fifth Avenue between East 56th & East 57th streets.

Irish Queers Remind Us Of The 1991 & 1992 NYC St. Patrick's Day Parades

New York City's Irish Queers have posted a chilling flashback to the last time they marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade:

Lest we forget where this all began, here's video from the 1991 and 1992 NYC St. Patrick's Parade. 1991 is the year ILGO marched in spite of the ban, with Mayor Dinkins, as guests of a progressive AOH contingent. The experience was so awful that ILGO refused to march again without full status -- as a contingent of out queers marching in their own community's parade. (Since then, much of the Irish and Irish American community has overcome their homophobia.) The next year, 1992, was first of many in which our protests were attacked or quashed and criminalized by the NYPD. In 1993, the parade organizers defined the parade in court as a "private, religious procession" in order to secure the right to their "explicitly anti-gay message."

The group continues to oppose the NYPD's participation. Mayor Bill De Blasio will this year break with longtime tradition and boycott the parade in support of the LGBT community.

(Via Good As You)

SLIDESHOW: St. Patrick's Day Protest

Millions of spectators, hundreds of thousands of drunken, chanting, singing, vomiting douchebags. And in the middle of it all, the Irish Queers. Full-screen photos are here..

HomoQuotable - Michelangelo Signorile

"It's 2012, and in the state of New York gays and lesbians have full civil rights, including marriage equality. Moreover, gays are no longer banned in the U.S. military. But they are still banned from Fifth Avenue's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in an embarrassing throwback for everyone involved.

"It's frankly appalling that NBC, and now its parent company Comcast, still sells the broadcast rights (on its local affiliate, WNBC) to the intolerant bunch that runs the parade (in 2007 that amount was $300,000) and then helps the organizers sell advertising to major companies. More than that, one of NBC's top executives, a man who aids the organizers in getting those ad dollars, was chosen as this year's Grand Marshal. [snip]

"The truth is, most LGBT activists weren't focused on the St. Patrick's Day Parade all these years, with bigger fish to fry. But many are now looking at this as unfinished business -- as I said, an embarrassment in a state where we now have marriage rights -- and they are also seeing Comcast as a company that is vulnerable. If Comcast doesn't want a battle on its hands, a battle it will ultimately lose, after much PR erosion, it will make sure that March 18, 2012 is the beginning of the end of the ban on gays in the St. Patrick's Day Parade." - Michelangelo Signorile, writing for the Huffington Post.

RELATED: Irish Queers will protest tomorrow's parade from NYPD pen across from St. Patrick's Cathedral. I'll be there.

Irish Queers To Protest NYC Parade

NEW YORK: Activists Call On NYPD To Boycott St. Patrick's Day Parade

The world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade takes place in Manhattan tomorrow and as always, gay groups are barred from participation. This year a coalition of LGBT groups are calling on the city's cops to boycott the parade. Via press release from Irish Queers:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists today announced plans to protest NYPD participation in the New York City St. Patrick's Parade, which takes place this Thursday. The parade is touted by organizers as an explicitly “anti-gay, Catholic” event, and has been defined in court as a “private, religious procession” in order to preserve the right to exclude LGBT marchers. Protesters, organized by the group Irish Queers, contend that NYPD participation in such a parade is a violation of New York City's human rights code. "Year after year, we watch thousands of uniformed NYPD participate in this anti-gay march. It reinforces everything LGBT people already fear about police: we're not safe with them, they haven't rejected discrimination, and they won't object when someone else discriminates,” said J.F. Mulligan, who plans to protest with Irish Queers.

A letter demanding that the NYPD not participate has been sent to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who has thus far ignored the message. Irish Queers and their allies will be protesting the parade from their annual position across from St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue.

Russian Embassy Protests Today

UPDATE: This post has been updated above, with photos.

Late notice, but there's a vigil taking place today at the Russian embassies in New York (noon) and San Francisco (4pm) in protest of the treatment of gay pride marchers at last week's Moscow Pride event. Protesters intend to pour Stolichnaya vodka into the sewers in front of each embassy. Nikolai Aleseyeev, head of Moscow Pride, says, "We are thankful for the support of gay Americans mobilizing on our behalf to do what we can't - stage vigils at Russian government offices. Please don't forget about your brothers and sisters beyond the United States, and our difficult struggle for equality."

Supporters of the protest include Brendan Fay, of Irish Queers, and Gilbert Baker, creator of the rainbow flag. Michael Petrelis is organizing the SF vigil, asking, "I beg my fellow gay and lesbian Americans to refrain from buying Stoli vodka, as just one way to express solidarity with gays in Moscow. This Pride season, please avoid ordering Stoli."

Read the U.S. State Department's comment of the plight of gays in Russia. An exerpt:

In May gay rights activists hosted a small international conference in Moscow on combating homophobia; however, the mayor of Moscow and the courts denied their applications to hold a gay pride parade. According to Human Rights Watch, on May 27, several dozen Russian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender protestors, accompanied by Russian and foreign supporters, including members of the European and German parliaments, sought to hold two successive protest rallies, one to lay flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Kremlin wall, and the second a vigil at city hall in support of the freedoms of assembly and expression.Organizers decided to hold these events after a court upheld Mayor Yuriy Luzkhov's ban on a march they planned for that day. At both events hundreds of antigay protesters, including skinheads and nationalists attacked the participants, beating and kicking many, while throwing projectiles and chanting homophobic slogans. Police intervened only belatedly, failing to protect demonstrators from violence; observers noted that police inaction aggravated the violence.

Magicially Queerlicious

ABOVE: Irish Queers member JF Mulligan sets up. (Embiggen to read the banner.)

Forget "Erin Go Bragh", the real chant of today's NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade was "Queers can march in Dublin! Queers can march in Cork! Why can't queers march in New York?" Or at least that was the favored chant in the Queer Corral, which is what the Farmboyz and I dubbed the fenced-in "official protesters" area on 5th Avenue in front of the Plaza Hotel, where the Irish Queers contingent was assigned. Our neighbors in protester jail were a group of very supportive artists protesting the parade's ban on whimsical costumes, such as leprechauns. (Thousands of men marched by in skirts, but no whimsical costumes are allowed?)
ABOVE: Irish Queers press liaison Emmaia Gelman leads the chanting.

Protesting for the 16th year, today's Irish Queers action also supported a broad menu of progressive causes, including the anti-war movement, the Sean Bell case, and immigration reform. This lead to some rather clunky although spiritedly delivered chants, one of which was so weakly rhymed that Farmboy C told me it offended his sense of meter. ("The cops murdered Sean! Homophobia is wrong!")

Yesterday's mini-blizzard dumped half a foot of snow on Manhattan, surely diminishing parade attendance. And after almost three hours of standing in ankle-deep slush, I had lost the feeling in my feet. But happily, the energy level in the Queer Corral was kept high by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, NYC's "radical marching band" that lends musical accompaniment to many protests around town. The Farmboyz and I particularly enjoyed their marching band versions of Beyonce's Crazy In Love and Salt-N-Pepa's Push It. Ooh, baby, baby.
I paid close attention to the parade participants as they passed the Irish Queers. The children in the parade were just bewildered by all the shouting. The folks in the several large groups visiting from various Irish counties seemed to be largely supportive, many of them waved, smiled and took pictures. The bagpipe brigades and marching bands hardly allowed their eyes to slide over to our side of the street, although a couple of the drummers gave us the finger and shouted, "Go home!"

The parade's organizers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, moved by with grim faces as the Irish Queers shouted "Shame! Shame!" Mayor Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani (marching separately, interestingly) did not give us so much as a wave. And the thousands of marching cops seemed too busy flirting with the hula-hooping cute girl in the artists' contingent next door to give much notice to us. I guess they didn't notice her sign.
ABOVE: The highlight of the day was when an Irish woman marching with County Kerry spotted the sign on the right and rushed over to the barricades to shout with a smile, "YES! He WOULD!" It was a wonderful moment. BELOW: From Cup Of Joe, a sign which once was posted in most NYC establishments, something the AOH seems to have conveniently forgotten.

Spitzer Nixes Parade

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer has announced that he will not march in tomorrow's NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade, the first NY governor to skip the parade in over a decade. Although Spitzer doesn't specifically cite the parade's ban on gays as his reason, his refusal to participate is consistent with his vigorous support of LGBT rights. Spitzer has promised to introduced legislation this year that will make gay marriage a reality in New York State.

RELATED: The group Irish Queers is planning a protest at the parade at Fifth Avenue & 58th Street at 10:30AM. That's conveniently near Bloomie's so I hope to see lots of us there! Protest, shop, brunch. It will be the gayest Saturday ever!
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