A huge crowd of New Yorkers and local elected officials gathered in the city’s Christopher Park on Thursday to see the LGBTQ+ Pride flag raised at the Stonewall National Monument days after the Trump administration had it removed. But local LGBTQ+ people have been left wondering how long it’ll stay up, as the Trump administration issued a statement denouncing the re-raising.

The New York Daily News estimated that over 2,000 people spilled onto the streets around the Greenwich Village park across from the historic Stonewall Inn, where the modern fight for LGBTQ+ rights kick-started in June 1969. Many held Pride flags of their own and signs reading “You can’t erase our history.” At one point, the crowd chanted “raise the flag.”

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Trump admin removes Pride flag from Stonewall monument in “deliberate act of erasure”

As the Associated Press notes, the Pride flag has flown for years over the National Park Service-run monument, the first in the nation to honor the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

But on Monday, the National Park Service removed the rainbow flag in accordance with new guidance issued by the Trump administration in January. A spokesperson for the agency told Gay City News that a government-wide guidance now mandates that “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”

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“Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance,” the spokesperson added.

The removal sparked immediate outrage in the LGBTQ+ community as well as local officials, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York state Sen. Erik Bottcher (D), and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

On Tuesday, Holyman-Sigal vowed that he and other elected officials would re-raise the Pride flag in Christopher Park this week. New York City Council speaker Julie Menin told the New York Times that she and other lawmakers had sent a letter to the National Park Service demanding the flag’s restoration. And on Thursday, the city council passed a resolution urging Congress to respect the history of the Stonewall monument, according to The Guardian. The flag was restored the same day.

“We have brought the flag back to a sacred site,” Holyman-Sigal told the Times Thursday.

“Stonewall is a sacred site in this city,” Menin said. “It is sacred ground for civil rights and sacred ground for the LGBTQ community.”

According to the Times, officials initially raised the original rainbow flag designed by artist Gilbert Baker, which includes eight stripes, below the American flag flying in Christopher Park. But several activists briefly removed the flag before hoisting it alongside the stars and stripes.

“We won’t let Trump erase LGBTQ+ history. Stonewall was a rebellion. Stonewall was a beginning. Today, Stonewall is a call to action once again,” U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who was among those at Thursday’s flag raising, said in a statement. “I’m proud to be at Stonewall today as we re-raise the Pride flag. It’s flying once again.”

The Pride flag removal represents the Trump administration’s latest attempt to rewrite the history of the Stonewall monument. Last February, the National Park Service (NPS) removed all mentions of transgender people from its website for the monument in compliance with the president’s executive orders prohibiting any federal recognition of trans people in any aspect of civic life. In June, the agency reportedly banned both the trans and the Progress Pride flags from being displayed at the monument. Both moves were seen as a blatant effort to erase the trans community’s pivotal role in the 1969 uprising.

The Times noted Thursday that it remains unclear how long the Pride flag will be allowed to fly in Christopher Park. In a statement, the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, called the flag restoration a “political stunt” and a “distraction” from what it described as the city’s failures in response to this year’s winter storms.

“Today’s political pageantry shows how utterly incompetent and misaligned the New York City officials are with the problems their city is facing,” the statement read, according to local ABC affiliate WABC.

“They’re probably gonna take it down again, maybe,” New Yorker Joyce Burstein told the Times on Thursday, “but it’ll just go back up.”

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