The Riot

In February, the Trump administration removed the rainbow pride flag from federal buildings across the country. This was an executive decision. It was carried out. The flags came down.

This week, the administration agreed to keep the rainbow pride flag flying at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.

I want to be careful to explain what Stonewall is, because it is the kind of thing where the name does not immediately tell you the whole story.

The Stonewall Inn is a bar in Greenwich Village, New York City. In June of 1969, it was a bar that served gay customers, at a time when serving gay customers in a bar was not entirely legal in New York. The Stonewall Inn did not have a liquor license. The management had an arrangement with the Genovese crime family, which in 1969 Greenwich Village was a common form of business continuity planning. The police raided it regularly as a matter of routine.

On June 28, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn again.

The difference, this time, is that the patrons did not leave.

What followed lasted several days. People threw bottles. They threw coins. They threw trash. A parking meter was used as a battering ram against the door the police had locked themselves behind. (To be clear: the police had locked themselves inside the bar they had raided, for their own protection. The crowd was outside. The crowd was singing. This is the sequence of events as documented.) Stonewall is considered the beginning of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The full history is longer than this.

The Stonewall National Monument was established in 2016. There is a plaque. The plaque describes what happened there.

And now the Trump administration has agreed to keep the rainbow pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, after removing it from every other federal property in February.

I have been thinking about this.

One reading: they did not ask what Stonewall was.

Another reading: they asked, and decided that the monument to the riot is the appropriate place for the flag of the riot. That everywhere else it was decoration. That here, it is a label for the night a parking meter was used to beat back the police.

The administration has not clarified which reading is correct.

The bar is still open. The parking meter has been replaced. The flag is flying.