NEW YORK — The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reaches its rainbow-laden crescendo as New York and other major cities around the world host major parades and marches on Sunday.
The festivities in Manhattan, home to the nation's oldest and largest Pride celebration, kick off with a march down Fifth Avenue featuring more than 700 participating groups and expected huge crowds.
Marchers will wind past the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar where a 1969 police raid triggered protests and fired up the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The site is now a national monument.
In San Francisco, marchers in another of the world's largest Pride events will head down the city's central Market Street, reaching concert stages set up at the Civic Center Plaza. San Francisco's mammoth City Hall is also among the venues hosting a post-march party.
Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada are among the other major North American cities hosting Pride parades on Sunday.
Several global cities including Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo, held their events earlier this month while others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November.
The first pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
Pride celebrations are typically a daylong mix of jubilant street parties and political protest, but organizers said this year's iterations will take a more defiant stance than recent years.
