“I think every year I ask myself the question, ‘Do we need to do this again?’” said Greg Lupton, treasurer of Hawaii Island LGBTQ Pride, about the festival and parade, which are in their seventh year. “While historical accounts of the night vary, the violent response ignited a national firestorm of activism that brought new visibility to the struggle for LGBT equality.”Īccording to GLAAD, a media monitoring organization formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the majority of Pride events are in June to commemorate the anniversary of Stonewall, which most historians consider to be the birth of the modern LGBT movement. “At the time, police raids on bars catering to LGBT patrons were common, but that night, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back,” GLAAD’s website states. The Stonewall riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, after New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village.
