Throngs of people gathered in the streets of New York on Sunday for a Gay Pride march expected to draw three million rainbow flag-waving supporters, 50 years after the Stonewall riots that galvanized the modern gay rights movement. “I believe we are going to have the greatest Pride celebration in the history of the globe,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a vocal defender of gay rights and a Democratic presidential hopeful, said ahead of the weekend events. Stonewall Day commemorates the June 1969 riots sparked by repeated police raids on the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, that proved to be a turning point in the LGBTQ community’s struggle for civil rights.
