Check out Fox 5 Coverage!!!
See Jake Goodman from Queer Rising in the video footage on the top left hand corner and click on photo to see Louis Flores from Connecting Rainbows quoting Dr. Martin Luther King!
Queer Rising rocks and yesterday from Union Sq. to Stonewall. I want to praise Louis Flores for his Martin Luther King banner....He wanted to have the banner for our City Hall counter protest and worked until 3am on the banner and could not get down so he brought it yesterday. So happy Fox 5 picked up his banner and this blog because it is powerful.
From Louis Flores:
Members of Connecting Rainbows demands that Sen. Dean Skelos call for a vote for – and pass – Marriage Equality TodayWrap-Up of Yesterday’s Rally at Union Square Park and March to Stonewall
June 20, 2011 – New York, NY – Yesterday, several hundred LGBT activists, allies, and religious leader supporters held a rally in Union Square Park, where leaders spoke in support of marriage equality. Activists then marched to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village and assembled outside the historic Stonewall Inn.
At the rally, community leaders expressed their support of marriage equality and called for passage of the landmark marriage equality bill, the fate of which rests in the hands of Sen. Dean Skelos, the New York State Senate Majority Leader.
“Law has changed over time, thanks be to God – or I wouldn’t be able to vote, and I’d be still drinking from a colored water fountain,” saidRev. Jacqueline Lewis, Ph.D., an African American and the Senior Minister of Middle Collegiate Church. “Good people of moral conscious change unjust laws.”
The rally and march was organised by the LGBT equality group, Queer Rising, and had been endorsed by many groups, includingConnecting Rainbows.
Link to YouTube video of Rally and March : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nesg4Napq58
About LGBT Civil Rights :Marriage is a vehicle that society uses to distribute rights, benefits, and equality. One way for LGBT Americans to access equal rights would be to be allowed to legally marry. Another way, which would work concurrently, would be to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
About Connecting Rainbows’ other efforts in support of Marriage Equality in New York State :
- In April 2011, members of Connecting Rainbows confronted New York State Sen. Shirley Huntley over her civil rights record. See video link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrPzVYwK4aE When she was young, Sen. Huntley has said that she participated in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Yet, in 2009, Sen. Huntely voted "No" on the marriage equality bill, which would have granted same-sex couples the same 1,324 legal protections that opposite-sex couples already have. Less than two months after the confrontation by members of Connecting Rainbows, Sen. Huntley made a public pledge to switch her “No” vote on marriage equality to a “Yes” vote.
- In June 2011, members of Connecting Rainbows began an effort to build a coalition of progressive religious leader allies in the spirit of social and economic justice. A demonstration for social and economic justice by that new coalition was held in City Hall Park on June 14, 2011. See video link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU0-a7eiaG4
About Connecting Rainbows : Connecting Rainbows is a group is a democratic collective of LGBTQ activists and allies, with no hierarchy. The group’s mission is to create a mass movement, demanding full civil rights for LGBT Americans, and its members organise civil rights walks and other actions. Connecting Rainbows uses the power of a social media platform, where people create online profiles, meet others, plan events, join groups, blog, and participate in online forums. Visit : http://connectingrainbows.ning.com/
