Hundreds Gathered At Stonewall, The Birthplace Of LGBT Rights, To Mourn Orlando's Dead
“I feel like we’ve had the carpet pulled out from under us.”
A cardboard sign reads, "You can take my life but you can't stop our voice. I Am Pulse."
Ema O'Connor/BuzzFeed News
NEW YORK — Hundreds of New Yorkers gathered outside Manhattan's historic Stonewall Inn on Sunday evening for a vigil honoring the 50 people killed and 53 injured in the massacre that occurred at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning — the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.
"Pulse was not just a gay club, it was a place of solidarity," a man yelled from the top of a stoop next to the Stonewall Inn. Hundreds repeated his words back to him in unison.
"A gay bar is the first place I learned to be me. A queer club is the first place I saw people that looked like me," he said, motioning to the Stonewall Inn.
"A gay bar started a revolution," he concluded to cheers.
The Stonewall Inn was the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots, a series of days-long violent protests that erupted after police raided the gay bar, attacking the patrons. It helped to spark the LGBT rights movement.
The historic bar and park across the street will soon become the first national monument to the LGBT rights movement in the United States.
Ema O'Connor
Around 3 AM Sunday morning, 29-year-old U.S. citizen Omar Mir Seddique Mateen entered Pulse nightclub and open fired on the crowd inside. The club was hosting a night for gay and transgender latinos and latinas.
The shooter called 911 shortly before the shooting and pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS, though there has been no official confirmation that he was trained or ordered by the Islamic State to carry out the attacks.