New York’s huge Gay Pride fest launches with star-studded concert

New York’s highly anticipated World Pride festivities officially opened Wednesday with a benefit concert hosted by performer Whoopi Goldberg and featuring headliner Cyndi Lauper.

The event at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center arena launches days of celebrations including more concerts, exhibitions, movie screenings, theatre shows and workshops as the city pays homage to those who took part in the 1969 Stonewall riots, a week-long protest against police harassment of the New York gay community at the time.

Ticket proceeds from Wednesday’s concert will go to three New York-based organizations supporting LGBTQ rights in the city.

Also set to perform are singers Chaka Khan and Ciara as well as Billy Porter, known for his showstopping red carpet looks and role on “Pose,” a television series about the primarily Black and Latino underground drag ball scene of the 1980s and early 1990s.

On Friday, a large crowd will gather outside Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn where on June 28, 1969 hundreds of gay and transgender people pushed back against the latest police raid on the establishment, sparking six days of unrest.

The weekend celebrations will feature concerts by Madonna and Grace Jones, winding up with a giant World Pride Parade on Fifth Avenue. It will be the sixth edition of World Pride, which began in Rome in 2000 and brought together droves of people from across the world.

New York’s Gay Pride is regularly one of the largest such events globally, but for this year’s milestone anniversary, authorities expect an additional two to three million visitors to attend.

Source: Agence France-Presse

Rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker dead at 65

LOS ANGELES—American artist Gilbert Baker, who created the rainbow flag recognized around the world as a symbol of gay pride, has died, close friend and rights activist Cleve Jones announced Friday.

Baker, who was 65, came up with the iconic eight-colored banner for San Francisco’s 1978 gay freedom day, a precursor to the modern pride festival, having taught himself to sew in his 20s.

The former soldier was heavily involved within the San Francisco LGBT rights movement and was a close friend of murdered activist and politician Harvey Milk.

“I am heartbroken. My dearest friend in the world is gone. Gilbert gave the world the Rainbow Flag; he gave me 40 years of love and friendship,” Jones posted on Facebook.

“I can’t stop crying. I love you forever Gilbert Baker.”

He didn’t reveal the cause, but the San Francisco Chronicle said the artist had died in his sleep at his home in New York late Thursday.

Jones urged San Francisco friends to gather for an evening vigil under a rainbow flag in the city’s Castro district.

The news prompted an outpouring of tributes and expressions of grief on social media.

“Rainbows weep. Our world is far less colorful without you, my love,” tweeted filmmaker Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for the screenplay to the 2008 biopic “Milk,” starring Sean Penn as the gay politician.

Baker, born in Kansas in 1951, served for two years in the army, according to his website, and was stationed him in San Francisco just as the gay liberation movement was gathering momentum.

“I just talked to Gilbert last month. He gave us his best and the rainbow flag will be an even more treasured keepsake of our history,” posted Robert York, a senior director at healthcare lobby group the National Quality Forum.

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net