“What will happen to our children?” The “parade” was actually more of a public demonstration - in order to comply with police regulations concerning organized events, we had to sing as much as march. “How can they allow this nauseating spectacle?” she shouted. More than 40 years after what turned out to be the first Pride parade not only in Israel but in the entire Middle East, my abiding memory is of a woman screeching at us in disgust. Within a few years, the event grew to three square blocks and 10,000 revelers, and eventually it moved to a nearby elementary school and was renamed the P Street Festival, which expanded Pride’s reach to ultimately include the city’s annual march and parade.Ĭo-organizer of Israel’s first LGBT Pride Parade in 1979 Eventually, 2,000 people were clogging the street, including a fair number of journalists who we made sure didn’t photograph the many closeted government workers in attendance. Come start time, only 24 people had shown up and we worried no one else would arrive. Two dozen organizations set up tables and then we waited.
bars along with The Blade, a local L.G.B.T.
On Pride day, a local women’s group hauled in some amplifiers and set up a portable stage. For weeks, we visited every business and resident on the street to get their permission, and all but one signed on. bookstore and decided to hold a sort of block party that year. We were living just around the corner from Lambda Rising, the city’s main L.G.B.T. The first Pride event in Washington, D.C., actually took place in my front yard on the corner of 20th Street and S Street in Dupont Circle. For one day, we were victorious against the Ed Davises of the world, and no one seemed “discommoded” in the least.įormer owner of Lambda Rising and organizer of Washington’s first Pride events in 1975 Crowds 10 deep cheered as we raucously urged them to join us. Homemade floats featured Vaseline jars and a crucified queer man. Chanting gay liberation slogans, we wore Halloween costumes, our best drag, tie-dye T-shirts, or almost nothing. With last-minute court approval, on June 28 at 7 p.m., a motley group clocking in at exactly 1,169 folks stepped off joyously from Hollywood and Vine. Legal or not, Davis could not stop a new militant identity on the rise. He then slapped on several seemingly insurmountable impediments, such as million-dollar liability bonds. march would “discommode the public” and that he’d have to allow “thieves and burglars” to parade next. Davis, the police chief and a man of antiquated views and diction, told our organizing committee in early June that a L.G.B.T. It was a near miracle that the first Christopher Street West Parade in Los Angeles kicked off at all on June 28, 1970. As my friend Jerry Hoose used to say about that year, “we went from the shadows to sunlight.” Today, my original marshal’s badge is on display in the Smithsonian.Įarly member of the Gay Liberation Front and Radicalesbians and co-organizer of the first marches in New York and Los Angeles Eventually we made it to Central Park, just like we had promised - and us activists transformed a movement from a few ragtag militants to thousand strong. When we reached 23rd Street, I climbed up a pole, looked back and saw a crowd stretch all the way to Christopher Street.
As a marshal, I especially had to know how to react and control the marchers if we were attacked.
So we held self-defense classes and learned how to protect ourselves. We didn’t have a police permit, so no one knew exactly what would happen - no one knew the type of force that might greet us. We intended to march from Greenwich Village and up to Central Park. The march was a reflection of us: out, loud and proud. The Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March was as revolutionary and chaotic as everything we did that first year after the Stonewall riots. Early member of the Gay Liberation Front and marshal of the first Pride march