Pride March Preparation: Cops and Garbage

Readers from last year know my post last year “Pride Destroyed the Park” with images and video of how the Pride March destroyed Washington Square Park with garbage.

You may have also seen I spoke this year on the podcast with Sandra Perez, the Executive Director of NYC Pride, who hosts one of the two marches, in particular not the one that ended last year in Washington Square Park. I also spoke with the head organizer for the Queer Liberation March, which organized that march.

Both first spoke about cleaning up after, which hides pollution, not reduces, but seemed amenable to trying to reduce, but cited how close it was to the event and how they were primarily concerned with safety, which is what stopping pollution is about.

I’ll go out early tomorrow morning to take pictures of the park. I hope participants didn’t wreck it this year. Walking around this morning, hours before the parade would start, I took pictures of the preparations. The two themes: cops and garbage, sadly.

Cops

In my decades living in Manhattan, cops have controlled parades more and more, creating impenetrable corrals making little sense. I can imagine they believe they make parades safer, but it’s not clear that belief has any basis. They certainly make moving around harder and likely cost a lot in overtime pay. The bigger issue is the number of cops, which is overwhelming.

Cops themselves don’t seem to understand what they’re doing. Ask any two how to cross a given street amid the barriers and you’ll never get consistent answers. They seem to make places less safe, more inviting for attack since people can’t get away.

Anyway, here are pictures of the police presence gathering:

Garbage

Vendors staked out their corners earlier, all selling things I can’t imagine anyone valuing for more than a few minutes, let alone past today. In other words, plastic poison that will pollute our environment and bloodstreams for centuries for likely not even a brief smile.