The fallout over the federal authorities’s removing of the Pleasure flag on the Stonewall Nationwide Monument in Greenwich Village took a brand new twist Wednesday when a Nationwide Park Service employee threatened a reporter who photographed their try to boost an American flag on the positioning.
Photograph by Dean Moses
The fallout over the federal authorities’s removing of the Pleasure flag on the Stonewall Nationwide Monument in Greenwich Village took a brand new twist Wednesday when a Nationwide Park Service employee threatened a reporter who photographed their try to boost an American flag on the positioning.
New York News visited the Stonewall monument at 11 a.m. on Feb. 11, simply in time to see the employee — who wore a inexperienced jacket with a Nationwide Park Service emblem on the sleeve — stroll over to the flag pole the place the rainbow colours had flown above the monument simply days earlier. The Trump administration had ordered the Pleasure flag faraway from the Stonewall website.
The employee had Previous Glory of their possession and appeared to make an effort to boost it on the pole instead of the Pleasure flag.
When the employee seen the New York News reporter snapping pictures, they grew to become enraged.
“Don’t take my picture,” she roared! “I will bash your head.” The employee then furled the American flag, positioned it in a provider bag, and received within the photographer’s face.
The employee had Previous Glory of their possession and appeared to make an effort to boost it on the pole instead of the Pleasure flag.When the employee seen the New York News reporter snapping pictures, they grew to become enraged.Photograph by Dean Moses 
“Don’t take my picture,” she roared! “I will bash your head.” The employee then furled the American flag, positioned it in a provider bag, and received within the photographer’s face.Pictures by Dean Moses
“I am not putting this up, there is a guy taking photos of me, have someone else do it,” the employee may very well be heard telling their boss on a cellphone name.
A member of the Nationwide Park Service abandons attempting to exchange the Pleasure flag with the American Flag exterior of the Stonewall in Wednesday morning after they see me taking pictures. In addition they threaten to “bash my head” for snapping the second. pic.twitter.com/pT9RAZ0zpn
The Stonewall Monument is federal parkland and public property. Reporters and photographers have First Modification rights to {photograph} and file there.
New York News reached out to the Nationwide Park Service for an evidence and is awaiting a response. The American flag was finally raised a number of hours after New York News’s go to on Wednesday morning.
Village residents fume over Pleasure flag removing
This comes because the Greenwich Village neighborhood stays outraged after the Pleasure flag was taken down on Friday.
Based on Tim Sutton, a area people member, he noticed two members of the Nationwide Parks Division eradicating the flag on Feb. 6, however didn’t notice precisely what was taking place.
“I was doing the same route to work at about 10 a.m. and there were three uniformed Park members who appeared to be lowering the flag. I’m standing right here and I think, ‘What are they doing?’ I thought, well, that’s strange. I’ve never seen them lowering anything before,” Sutton recalled. “It’s an insult.”
Shaun Fletcher is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood and welled up with tears upon seeing the flag removing.Photograph by Dean Moses
Shaun Fletcher is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood and welled up with tears upon seeing the flag removing.
“I am kind of amazed on a number of levels, like at the ballsiness of taking this and thinking that no one would notice that,” Fletcher mentioned. “It’s one of those things that you just think it’s over. You can put the flags away. We’re done with that. No, it’s an ongoing battle. It just seems silly in 2026 and this is an issue that he picks.”d.
However native elected officers and advocates argue that the removing of the Pleasure flag from Stonewall — the positioning the place the LGBTQ+ civil rights motion took off following the Stonewall Riots of 1969 — was an act of historic erasure and revision by the Trump administration, which has pushed insurance policies thought of hostile to the LGBTQ+ neighborhood.
Reverend Matthew F. Heyd, the seventeenth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York ALs commented on the removing.
“The administration ordered the Pride flag removed from the Stonewall memorial— another desperate attempt to erase our history. It won’t work. The lesson of Stonewall is our dignity cannot be erased and that our people cannot be silenced,” Heyd sai
A protest has been deliberate for Thursday afternoon, when locals have deliberate to re-raise the Pleasure flag in defiance of the Trump administration’s order.
With reporting by Matt Tracy and Robert Pozarycki
