Not All Irish Eyes Are Smiling In NYC
The chairman of the St. Patrick's Day Parade marched in the famed New York event Friday and sidestepped questions about his incendiary remarks that compared gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes.
"Today is St. Patrick's Day. We celebrate our faith and heritage, everything else is secondary," said the chairman, John Dunleavy, who was wearing a sash of the Irish colors.
A day earlier, Christine Quinn, the City Council's first openly gay leader, blasted Dunleavy for his remarks. Quinn, who is Irish, declined to participate in the Fifth Avenue parade after organizers barred an Irish gay and lesbian group for a 16th straight year.
"I don't even think they dignify a response," Quinn said of Dunleavy's comments to The Irish Times.
Huge crowds lined the streets at the start of the parade, at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, waving Irish flags and wearing green hats, green carnations and painted green clovers on their faces.
The city's parade, with 150,000 marchers, is the nation's oldest and largest St. Patrick's Day parade.
The parade was led by a New York State National Guard unit, the Fighting 69th brigade, just back from Iraq, where it lost 19 of its members. WCBS-AM reporter Rich Lamb (audio) spotted a familiar face among the soldiers: A former WCBS-AM staffer.
Lamb has covered the New York parade for more than 20 years.
Elsewhere on St. Patrick's Day:
New York spectator Mary Sweeney, who moved there from Ireland 15 years ago with her two daughters, said, "I want them to grow up knowing their Irish heritage. Everyone wants to be Irish today."
New York "is the kernel of the whole Irish community in the U.S.," said Joe Sanning, 52, a police officer with the Ireland National Police Service in Tipparery, Ireland. "We don't have parades like this at home."
Dunleavy, in his Irish Times interview, said, "If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?"
Referring to the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, Dunleavy said, "People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?"
The comments crew protests at Friday's parade.
"The comments bring to the forefront a longstanding bigotry, and the bigotry often translates into violence in our communities," said graduate student Emmaia Gelman, 31.
Gelman, who was among a dozen protesters organized by a group called Irish Queers, hoisted a sign that read, "Troops Out, Queers in," a reference to military groups participating in the parade.
Quinn said the city's Irish gays had long hoped to march with their own banner, like other groups, but were willing to walk with the City Council as a unified group.
"There were moments where I was hopeful that we could have come to some agreement," said Quinn, who was arrested in 1999 for protesting at an exclusionary parade in the Bronx. But that didn't happen."
Dunleavy told The New York Times in Friday's editions that Quinn "is more than welcome to march as the leader of the City Council, but no buttons or decorations in any shape or form."
The decision came as no surprise to gay activist Brendan Fay, who has spent 16 years in the thick of the fight to march.
"You know the song: 'When Irish eyes are smiling, all the world seems bright and gay?'" Fay said. "Well, not on Fifth Avenue."
Efforts to let Irish gays march under their own banner date to 1991, when parade organizers first rejected an ILGO application. Instead, 35 ILGO members were sprayed with beer and insults as they marched with a Manhattan division of the Hibernians and then-Mayor David Dinkins. It was the group's last appearance in the parade, which draws up to 2 million spectators.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg marched in the parade Friday and refused comment on the dispute.
He had earlier urged the Hibernians to change their stance. "I've always believed this is a city where all the parades should be open to everybody, and orientation, gender ... should not be the deciding thing," he said.
The mayor marched earlier this month in an inclusive St. Patrick's parade in Queens.
Fay said the seemingly endless battle for inclusion gets exasperating. "I sometimes joke there will be a peace brokered on the streets of Belfast faster than between the Irish on Fifth Avenue."
But Quinn said she was optimistic for the 2007 parade. "I've only been speaker for 10 weeks," she said, "so now we have 12 months to try to figure this out."