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"So there's just a really intense rift there around gender and race and class. From what we've heard from older, white cisgender members of the community, they do feel a sense of reassurance and safety when police is there," Ray said.
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"I talk to people who do not feel that police presence makes them feel safer, it makes them feel threatened. She said she has heard mixed thoughts on keeping police out of the Pride march within the LGBTQ community. Mila Jam poses in a jumpsuit that reads, "Stop killing us" at the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives & Against Police Brutality in New York, June 28, 2020. "That's a thing that I think we'll start to see more of." "Pride marches don't want to celebrate and create a platform for the police as marchers," Audacia Ray, director of community organizing and public advocacy for the group, told ABC News. LGBTQ advocacy group, New York City Anti-Violence Project, wrote a letter to Heritage of Pride last June demanding the organization divest from the NYPD. The debate was renewed after the death of George Floyd last year while in police custody in Minneapolis, which sparked widespread protests against police brutality. Louis announced similar policies, but reversed them following pushback. In 2017, Pride Toronto started barring police from participating in its march, amid demands from the local Black Lives Matter chapter. The calls have been renewed in recent years amid Black Lives Matter protests against police misconduct. The move comes as LGBTQ activists have debated the role uniformed police officers should have at Pride marches, which formed as a response to a violent police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, in 1969. A police officer applauds as parade-goers celebrate during the New York City Pride Parade, in New York, June 26, 2016.