The Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) together with members of the Roosevelt Island LGBTQ+ community and other local residents gathered together this morning to celebrate the third annual raising of the Pride Flag at the Main Street Flagpole in the turnaround next to Blackwell House.
According to RIOC Communications Director Bryant Daniels:
It’s a pleasure to see you all here for our now third annual Pride Flag Raising Ceremony, marking the beginning of Pride Month 2025.
We started this 3 years ago, and it feels like each subsequent year this simple act—supporting our family, friends and neighbors in the LGBTQ+ community—has grown in importance.
Today especially, with all that’s happening in the world, it’s particularly important for us to come together and stand for the rights of others; to celebrate our diversity and our shared humanity.
These acts, these demonstrations of tolerance and love are important because we aren’t yet where we need to be. Sometimes it feels like we’ve come very far, and other times we’re shocked back into a complicated reality, where progress is rarely linear.
This ceremony is important because, while the greater Roosevelt Island community is one of remarkable love and acceptance, it’s not always universal. Just this year, in 2025, in the heart of New York City, several of the Pride Flag Ceremony posters we hung on the island were defaced, and even after we rehung them, they were still torn down. I know RIVAA gallery, which is hosting its own Pride exhibition again as it always does, had similar issues with their posters.
All the more reason why we need to be here today. All the more powerful is the symbolism of flying the Pride Flag right in the heart of our community, and at other key locations around the island including our Public Safety headquarters.
We Pride ourselves—no pun intended—on being one of, if not the safest community in all of New York City. And that safe haven extends to our LGBTQ friends and family, both those who live here and those who visit. Roosevelt Island is a loving and accepting place, and we’re going to work hard to keep it that way.
This year we’re celebrating something of a milestone here, 50 years of residents living on the island. And if you look back on the history of this island and how it came to be, the roots of a progressive vision of inclusivity are not hard to find. The island was designed to be a mixed income community, something of an experimental neighborhood built by government from the ground-up to be inclusive, in the vein of many of the Great Society programs on the 60’s.
Today, 50 years later, I look around and see an experiment that was a great success. We have a remarkably diverse community here, and that diversity, along with our shared and often unspoken acceptance of one another, gives us our shared strength.
So, again, thank you all for coming. It’s RIOC’s pleasure to stand in solidarity with our LGBTQ community, not just today, not just during Pride Month, but every day here on Roosevelt Island. With that, I’d like to turn it over to our COO Mary Cunneen to share a few words.
Ms Cunneen, Roosevelt Island residents Penny Gold and Thom Heyer, and RIOC Public Safety Inspector Estrella Suarez spoke very eloquently about about what the raising of the Pride Flag on Roosevelt Island meant personally to them.
According to Ms Cunneen:
… Decades ago a moment like this, raising the Pride Flag in public with the support from the community and colleagues would have been nearly unimaginable. Great strides have been made in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, especially right here in New York City.
There are still barriers to break down, still people in our own city and across the country who face discrimination or fear just for being who they are.
Speaking from personal experience, the road has been rocky but is made better with the support from those gathered here today. Pride Month is a reminder of how far we’ve come and how much more we need to do.
It’s about love, visibility and acceptance for all of us and maybe most importantly it’s about bringing kindness into every space we’re in. So let’s keep listening, keep showing up, keep creating a Roosevelt Island where everyone is safe respected and celebrated.
Happy Pride to Roosevelt Island and let’s keep showing up for each other and thank you for being here.
Watch the video of the full ceremony.
Click here for Roosevelt Island Pride Month events and activities.
UPDATE 8:35 PM – From RIVAA Gallery Instagram page: