NYC Pride Parade Expects 2.5 Million Along New Route

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — About 2.5 million people are expected to line the streets of Manhattan for Sunday's LGBT Pride March along a new route that heads uptown past the historic Stonewall Inn. Nearly 49,000 marchers and thousands of cops will join the massive crowd for 49th annual hours-long parade, an organizer and police officials said.

"We think it will be a success because the numbers have been large," said Julian Sanjivan, NYC Pride's march director.

Organizers worked with the NYPD to create a new route for the march — one of the world's largest — before the city hosts next year's WorldPride festival, which is expected to draw 5 to 6 million people, Sanjivan said. Next year will also mark the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

Pride marchers will step off at noon from 16th Street and Seventh Avenue, head downtown to the Stonewall Inn at Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street, then travel east on Christopher and West Eighth streets before turning up Fifth Avenue. The parade will disperse at Fifth Avenue and 29th Street.

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Participants previously marched down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, where the Stonewall riots gave birth to the modern LGBT rights movement. A moment of silence at the Stonewall Inn at 11:58 a.m. will precede this year's parade.

The theme of this year's march, "Defiantly Different," aims to shine a spotlight on the LGBT community at a time when President Donald Trump's White House has not even formally recognized Pride Month, Sanjivan said.

"Given what we're going through currently with the current Trump administration, I think it's important to highlight how the community feels," he said.

The parade will honor four grand marshals: Tennis star Billie Jean King, transgender advocate Tyler Ford, human rights activist Kenita Placide and Lambda Legal, an LGBT civil rights group. A new grandstand at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue will feature several performers, Sanjivan said.

While there's currently no active threat against the march, the NYPD will have thousands of uniformed and plainclothes cops along the route, as well as more than 100 blocker cars and sand trucks, Chief of Patrol Rodney Harrison said.

"We encourage anyone at the march who sees anything suspicious to let a officer know or to please call 911," Harrison said.

The LGBT movement has a rocky history with the police. The Stonewall riots started with resistance to a police raid on the bar in June 1969. And the advocates have criticized the NYPD for criminalizing queer and transgender youth of color.

There are now several LGBTQ cops in the NYPD's ranks. Some of them will be marching in Sunday's parade, Harrison said.

"We support them wearing their uniform because they're such a major fabric in why we're one of the greatest police departments in the world," Harrison said.

(Lead image: A rainbow-clad NYPD car appears at 1 Police Plaza on Friday ahead of Sunday's LGBT Pride March. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)