ST. LOUIS — Now that uniformed police officers can march in Sunday’s Pride parade, the group selected to be the parade’s grand marshal will not.
The Metro Trans Umbrella Group bowed out this week, when PrideSTL reversed an earlier decision that asked uniformed police officers not to attend the parade.
Mayor Lyda Krewson said in a statement that the “exclusion of the Police Department, or of anyone, would not be in the spirit of our City.”
"Pride had promised us not to have armed, uniformed police officers in the parade, and then they changed their mind,” said Sayer Johnson, Metro Trans Umbrella Group’s executive director.
Friday marked 50 years since the Stonewall riots in New York City. That’s the origin of these Pride marches, and it started because of a police raid.
Johnson said police discrimination against the trans community is still an issue in the U.S.
“And we did not want to be complacent in our own oppression,” he said.
Hundreds of people instead attended a previously planned “trans and gender-free pride” march in Benton Park on Friday.
"A lot of people might be here for the drama, but I also believe that a lot of people were going to come anyway because they saw this and were excited about it, and they needed a reminder that we were worth more than arguing with other people,” the ACLU of Missouri’s Jay-Marie Hill said.
It was a safe space where they could be seen for who they are.
“Really, what I want to explain to folks is that the trans-expansive people are experiencing liberation, and we’re struggling and we need support,” Johnson said.