The pride flag was put back up at the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village during a rally on Feb. 12, following its removal earlier in the week by the Trump administration. The event did not go as smoothly as intended, as the pride flag put up by city officials was taken down and replaced with another by community members just minutes after being raised. 

Shortly after 4 p.m. on Feb. 12, Manhattan Borough President and former State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, along with State Senator Erik Bottcher and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, re-raised the pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in Christopher Park. The rainbow flag was placed on its own shorter, portable pole that was then zip tied to the official flag pole at the monument. 

Members of the crowd immediately took issue with how Hoylman-Sigal, Bottcher, and Williams raised the flag, which some considered inadequate and unsatisfying.

The makeshift setup placed the pride flag just below the newly-raised U.S. flag, which had replaced the pride flag at the monument on Feb. 11. Within fifteen minutes of being raised, the rainbow flag put up by city officials came down. The zip ties holding up the pole supporting the flag were cut just after officials cleared the gated gardens of the park. 

“Stand up for each other,” Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative board member Angelica Christina said to the crowd as folks became restless after watching the first attempt to raise the flag. 

Christina spoke publicly throughout the rally, giving information to the assembled crowd and leading various chants. “We demand justice for our community. These politicians are not going to protect us. We protect us,” she said.

The pride flag was then raised in its original place on the official flagpole, right alongside the new U.S. flag, by community members Josh Iku, Mariah Lopez, a transgender activist and the executive director of the Strategic Trans Alliance for Radical Reform (S.T.A.R.R.), Jay W. Walker, a longtime activist and NYC resident who co-founded the Reclaim Pride Coalition, and a fourth unnamed protestor.

“What we saw today was rather disappointing, to not remove the American flag and to put up the LGBT flag with a makeshift pole was rather alarming and distressing,” Christina said after the second flag went up. “[Our community] deserve[s] better representation. We deserve better politicians that will show up for us and that will fight with us, because it is their fight too.”

The Stonewall National Monument is located just minutes away from The New School’s University Center. The university has had a presence in Greenwich Village since 1930, when it opened a new building at 66 W 12 St now known as Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall.

The Stonewall National Monument was established just 10 years ago, on June 24, 2016. It is the first and only federally-funded LGBTQ+ national monument, dedicated to the impactful Stonewall uprising that took place at the Stonewall Inn just across the street in June 1969.

The uprising falls in line with The New School’s founding principles. The founders set out to create “a new kind of academic institution, one where faculty and students would be free to honestly and directly address the problems facing societies,” according to The New School’s website.

The pride flag was taken down from the monument the night of Feb. 9, after new guidance from President Trump was released on Jan. 21 restricting what flags can be displayed at public parks owned and maintained by the National Park Service (NPS).

Under the new guidance, with some exceptions, only the U.S. flag, Department of the Interior (DOI) flags, and the POW/MIA flag can be flown in public spaces where “NPS is responsible for the upkeep, maintenance, and operation of the flag and flagpole.”

City officials decried the removal of the flag by the Trump Administration.

“I am outraged,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a post on his X account. “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history. Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it. I will always fight for a New York City that invests in our LGBTQ+ community, defends their dignity, and protects every one of our neighbors—without exception.”

Members of the New York City Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus wrote an official letter to NPS, led by Council Speaker Julie Menin, addressing their concerns about the flag’s removal. 

“The events that took place [at Stonewall] catalyzed a global movement for dignity, equality, and freedom — guiding principles upon which our nation was founded,” the letter said. “This decision sends a deeply troubling message, one that shows the world that we are willing to sanitize and erase our history and the very values that make America great.”

The rally was organized by city officials and members of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative. Hoylman-Sigal shared a photo on his social media accounts on Feb. 10 of the empty flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument, where a rainbow pride flag had waved since 2021.

“Our community is not going to stand by idly as the Trump administration tries to erase our history,” Hoylman-Sigal shared in a video on social media. This action comes almost a year after NPS removed all references to transgender people from the Stonewall entry on their website, among other ongoing attacks by the Trump administration on the LGBTQIA+ community.