18th New York Dyke March

The march, subtitled 'barely legal' was due to kick off from Bryant Park on 42nd St and then go down 5th Avenue to Washington Square park, a distance of some 2 miles at 5pm yesterday. As suggested dykes started to assemble in the park during the afternoon, and I was fortunate to find a friendly group from womenabout.org as well as Mindy and Elaine from New Jersey.

At first there didn't appear to be a great number of marchers, but as the show kicked off from the 42nd street end of the Park women of all colours, and ages began to join the march and continued to do so for the length of the march, swelling the final numbers into the 2 to 3 thousand mark I would guess.

March is probably not the right word to use, as the pace was pretty sedate, mainly due to some argument over the amount of space on 5th avenue we could occupy, cones and road markings were the physical and metaphorical barriers that gay women, not just in New York have to face and overcome. Some did it surreptitiously, edging the cones a few inches back towards the middle of the road, others were more slightly more daring, walking down the white line marking of the road, and some were openly engaged in removing the cones and demanding the same freedom as everyone else.

Religious protestors tried to give us some shit on the way, with various banners at various stages. ( the same ones I spotted at the Mermaid Parade two weekends ago - don't they have anything better to do than check out other peoples alleged sins? Or are these the same kind of people that held people of colour as second class citizens in the USA until the Civil Rights Movement got up and fought back for equality. Still it's not fair to paint everyone with the same brush, and a church on route came out to support the march, by offering water as well as a singing choir, to restore faith in the fact that not all religious people condemn and contort the bible to suit their own bigotry.

Shortly before reaching Washington Square Park there was a moment or two when the weather could possibly have rained on the parade, but hey, it would only have caused an even bigger rainbow than the already colourful parade. Once into the Park the marchers made it their own by celebrating in the fountain, a local tradition.

What do we want? Equality. When do we want it? NOW!