However, in more accepting cities, the parades take on a festive or even Mardi Gras-like character, whereby the political stage is built on notions of celebration. Many parades are largely dependent upon the political, economic, and religious settings of the area. The date was chosen because the Stonewall events began on the last Saturday of June and because organizers wanted to reach the maximum number of Michigan Avenue shoppers.
Many of the participants spontaneously marched on to the Civic Center, now Richard J. Chicago Gay Liberation organized a march from Washington Square Park to the Water Tower at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago avenues, which was the route originally planned. The first pride march began in the summer of 1970. The Annual Reminder pickets, organized by members of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis, and the gay men’s group Mattachine Society protested at both the White House and the United Nations. Gay rights protest movements were visible in 1965. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to an assortment of patrons, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth.Įarly on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, LGBTQ+ people rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 – World Pride NYC 2019, produced by Heritage of Pride commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with five million attending in Manhattan alone. The events became annual and grew internationally.
In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall. The parades seek to create community and honor the history of the movement. Globally, most pride events occur annually, and some take place around June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, a pivotal moment in modern LGBTQ+ social movements. In 2019, the last in-person Athens Pride event since the pandemic, estimated crowd size was almost 100,000. Athens Pride 2017 took place in front of the Greek Parliament at Syntagma, with an estimated 60,000 participating in the 13th festival. The relocation of the event to the central square of the country had been petitioned, for years, due to increasing crowd numbers but also because of its symbolic importance.