One day a year, on St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish and non-Irish alike wear green, sing jigs and show off their buttons that say “Kiss Me I’m Irish.”
Everybody can be Irish on that day unless, according to the organizers of the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade, you are a gay or lesbian. Ten years ago this weekend, the all-inclusive St. Pat’s For All Parade and Festival in Sunnyside was born and organizers believe that the theme of inclusiveness has been the reason for the parade’s success.
“It’s easy to say that it’s a gay parade but its not. It’s everybody together,” said Ellen Duncan, a registered nurse who lives in Flushing who helped co-found the parade. “To do it for one group is very limiting, it has to be for all.”
Latinos, Choctaw Native Americans, Tibetans, school bands, girl scouts, bag pipers, puppeteers, gays and lesbians, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, will march alongside Irish men and women on Sunday, March 1 beginning at 1:30 p.m. on 43rd Street and Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside and ending at 61st Street and Woodside.
Other political leaders marching will include Representative Joseph Crowley, City Comptroller Bill Thompson, Councilmembers David Weprin and Tony Avella, and District Leader Danny Dromm.
“What we were doing was trying to find an alternative to the Hibernian parade in Manhattan,” said Dromm, a co-founder of the parade and a proud gay Irish Catholic. “What better place to have an inclusive St. Patrick’s Day Parade than in Queens, the borough of nations.”
“This parade is more than the tri-color action, the pipers and the politicians. It has a unique character to it,” said Brendan Fay, one of the co-founders and this year’s co-chair. “I am somewhat amazed and surprised by the number of groups that come back every year.”
Inviting a Peruvian organization was easy because they revered Irishman Roger Casement, who fought for the rights of the indigenous in Peru and the Ecuadorian’s participate because the founder of the Ecuadorian Navy was Irish. The Chilean’s came onboard because their first president, Bernardo O’Higgins, was part Irish.
“It’s a fiesta, a big celebration and I think that is the draw of it,” said Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy, this year’s co-chair who along with Fay have spend about $10,000 – mostly from donations – to put the parade together. The only fundraiser the organizers host is a concert the Friday before the parade, which this year sold-out. “It’s probably the smallest budget of any parade.”
“Parades are an important aspect in the city because it allows ethnic communities to have a public celebration,” said Fay, who sought that sense of compatriotism from the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade but didn’t find it there. “We pushed the boundary wider [with the St. Pat’s For All Parade] so that everybody can be a part of the celebration if they wanted to.”
