We will not be erased

Let me start with something that happened in a bar on Christopher Street in New York City in the summer of 1969.

It was June 28th. The police came — as they always came — to raid the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village tavern where gay people had the audacity to simply be themselves. But that night, something shifted. The community fought back. It spilled into the streets. It roared. It became a movement. It became us.

The Stonewall Inn didn't just survive that night. It became sacred ground — the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. In 2016, it was designated America's first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history. A Pride flag flew there for years, visible and proud, waving at everyone who made the pilgrimage to Christopher Park to feel a little less alone in this world.

Then, on February 9th of this year, the Pride flag was quietly removed by the National Park Service, following new federal guidance restricting which flags could fly at national park sites.

Quietly. At Stonewall. Of all the places. Of all the flags.