Throughout most of the northeast, June is LGBTQ Pride Month. And this year, with LGBTQ rights under attack by the current White House and its right-wing allies, 1199SEIU members at marches in New York City, Albany and Massachusetts showed their Union Pride and determination to defend the LGBTQ community.

This year, New York City was the first city in the U.S. to host World Pride, an international event that connects the global LGBTQ movement and advocates for LGBTQ causes. New York City’s Stonewall50/ World Pride 2019 week-long festival drew millions of visitors from around the world and culminated in the massive June 29 parade in Manhattan.

The celebration also marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, the Greenwich Village uprising that gave birth to the modern gay rights movement and amplified the voices of LGBTQ people of color in the queer diaspora. Quintasha Johnson, a housekeeping worker at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, marched in the Queens Pride Parade on June 3. The event drew tens of thousands of marchers, spectators, and allies who joyfully celebrated difference and rejected hatred and oppression.

“It was very important because it brought us all together, not just as co-workers, but as a community. The more we do things like this, the stronger we are,” said Johnson, who marched bedecked in a glowing orange feathered head dress.

Beverley Miller, a central supply clerk at Rosewood Gardens Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Rensselaer, NY, helped build 1199’s float for the Capital Pride Parade and Festival in Albany on June 9.

“We have to make sure that LGBTQ people know we are not here to judge them, and we will stand by them,” said Miller. “This is the example we must set in 1199: That we will fight for each other— no matter what.”

- 1199 Magazine | July / August 2019