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“I go to gay clubs all the time,” said Mr. Instead last night he joined the demonstration, unable to shake the feeling that he could have been one of the 49 victims. We refuse to have that taken from us.”Īustin Wade said he had expected to spend June celebrating Gay Pride Month with parades and other celebrations. “But gay bars have always been one place where we can feel free. person at any bar around the country,” she said. “Those victims could’ve been any L.G.B.T. Lentz acknowledged that like Pulse, her business was a potential target. “And we’re continuing to show that we’re strong and love wins.” community has survived so much before, from AIDS to hate crimes,” said Ms. Stacey Lentz, a co-owner of the Stonewall, said she felt comforted by the added protection, but also by throngs of people who have been gathering at the bar since Sunday morning, bedecking its red brick facade with flowers and cards, and overwhelming the street out front for the vigil. “It touches my heart to see this kind of solidarity.” “I can remember the days when cops were raiding this place,” said William Drummer, 91, watching the crowd thicken. The authorities deployed hundreds of specialized officers and added uniformed police at heavily trafficked areas of Manhattan and at places popular among gay people, officials said. de Blasio said that no credible threats had been directed at New York, though the Orlando shooting had city officials here “on high alert.” Standing guard at the rally was a large squad of New York City police officers, many wearing counterterrorism gear.
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The New Yorkers who died at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, included Enrique Rios, 25, a student who lived with his grandmother in Brooklyn and was on vacation in Florida, and Shane Tomlinson, 33, a singer from Queens who had moved to Orlando. The crowd’s grief seemed magnified by the fact that Omar Mateen, who was born in New York, perpetrated the killings and that at least two victims identified by the authorities had roots in the city as well. de Blasio welcomed the thousands of people who had come “all in solidarity, all in common cause,” and he criticized those who were using the tragedy to turn Americans against one another. He added, “Until we have a national policy, none of us are safe.” “We outlawed assault weapons in this state. Cuomo, a Democrat, standing before a lectern festooned with a sign declaring “We Are Orlando,” and flanked by an American flag and a gay pride flag. “We passed gun control in this state,” said Mr. Bratton and other city officials joined the commemoration, calling for calm, unity and gun legislation that would ban nationwide - as they are in New York - the military-style automatic weapon used in the attack and others like it. Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner William J. The speakers bemoaned not only the assault on the gay club, but also the lack of action in Congress to pass comprehensive federal gun control legislation, necessitating vigils like this too often. “It’s a powerful reminder to people that we’re standing together.” “Going to the bars now is an act of activism and defiance,” said Nico Medina, 34, a book editor from Orlando who now lives in South Slope, Brooklyn. For many New Yorkers, this was the most powerful form of demonstration possible: reclaiming this sanctum of gay life that had so recently been transformed into a war zone in Orlando.
THE GAY BAR SHOOTING IMAGES TAKEN BY PHOTOGRAPHERS SERIES
So, despondent but not despairing, thousands converged on the West Village in Manhattan on Monday night for a vigil at the Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay rights movement was ignited by a series of riots in 1969.
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Even giving blood was not an option for gay men, who are largely barred from donating. Donations of money could do only so much, and calls for gun control are so often unheeded. For lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender New Yorkers coping with news of the massacre in Orlando, Fla., the grief was compounded by a sense of helplessness. From a thousand miles away, they watched as the horrors replayed in an endless loop, the death count climbing to an unimaginable high.