LGBTQ advocates who spoke at a rally the day before Pride Month began emphasized the meaning behind a painted Pride flag that had been removed without notice from the West Orange Town Hall steps.
The flag’s removal shocked many in the Essex County township and prompted LGBTQ civil rights organization Garden State Equality several weeks ago to place 100 Pride flags on the municipal grounds, chalk Pride colors back onto the steps and walkway leading up to them, and hold a rally May 31 in front of Town Hall.
“Those painted steps, while small, were a show that even if our country didn’t have our backs, our town did. Now that they are gone, that sense of security is gone, too,” Miles, a 14-year-old transgender — and queer — identifying person of color, told rally attendees. About 150 people attended throughout the course of the rally, according to a GSE spokesperson.
Miles, whose father David asked that his family’s last name not be used out of concern for his son’s safety, talked of how he felt the need to speak out growing inside him when he was in seventh grade and Donald Trump became president for the second time.
Trump’s administration has come with anti-trans rhetoric and executive orders. The federal government has declared there are only two genders, and Trump has worked to ban transgender women from women’s sports and from the military. “Now more than ever, our community needs the support of our town,” Miles said.
West Orange Mayor Susan McCartney previously said the removal was because the steps needed repair and the township had to prepare for its Memorial Day observance and its celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
McCartney, who did not respond to a request for comment on the rally, previously confirmed that the painted flag will not be put back because of a policy in place since 2024 about not raising any flags, or having any type of visual display, on the steps of Town Hall. The policy was put into place in response to the flying of Israeli and Palestinian flags at Town Hall after Oct. 7, 2023.
“It wasn’t against anyone in particular or any group in particular. It was just to maintain the peace,” McCartney said in a previous interview. The Pride symbol on the Town Hall steps had been painted prior to 2024.
The way the township handled the removal and it being done so close to the start of Pride Month are why many LGBTQ advocates and supporters both inside and outside the township took issue.
Township Councilperson Tammy Williams organized the painting of the Pride flag on the steps in 2022. “What many of you may not know is why,” Williams said to the crowd. “The why was never about paint, the why was never about politics, the why was about people. As someone who has spent my life serving this community, I have learned that every person deserves to feel seen, valued and welcomed,” adding that everyone deserves to know they belong.
“When I lost my younger sister to suicide, I learned a very painful lesson: People need to know they matter, people need to know they are accepted, and people need to know they have a place in this world,” she said.
“they claim that it’s because of the 250th, so let’s remind them what the 250th is all about.”
Dean Dafis, a committeeperson from the nearby township of Maplewood, also spoke at the rally. Dafis is Maplewood’s first openly LGBTQ representative and served as its first openly gay mayor. “Love wins!” Dafis shouted, as the crowd echoed that and cheered.
Dafis said he can’t “frickin’ believe” this is happening in West Orange and called that fact “ludicrous.” “And they claim that it’s because of the 250th, so let’s remind them what the 250th is all about,” Dafis said.
“Let me hear you say, ‘We, the People’,” he said, as the crowd echoed and cheered again. “That’s right. ‘We, the People.’ ‘We, the People’ means we, not kings. ‘We, the People’ means we have the power, not those in power,” he said.
“We the People, Mayor Susan McCartney, we see you, and we’re coming after you. Make no mistake about it,” he said.
Dafis continued by saying “there’s nothing but love in our hearts. Yeah, we’re passionate; we’re angry, and that’s OK. I would even say that we’re enraged by this, and that is OK. But we come in peace. We gather with love and with purpose. We are the hope, we are the courage, we are the necessary force of good against hate and bigotry. The power, as I said, is ours, not theirs,” Dafis said.
“Sixty years ago, it was dangerous to be authentically yourself, and today we are still facing the same challenges.”
GSE acting Executive Director Brielle Winslow-Majette noted from the podium set up on the Town Hall steps that the first Pride was a riot, a reference to the June 1969 Stonewall Uprising. “Sixty years ago, it was dangerous to be authentically yourself, and today we are still facing the same challenges,” Winslow-Majette said.
She asked the crowd to take a look at her shirt. She said that while she has been in the business of activism, she has been called many things such as “heterophobic.” She added that when she and others chalked the steps, the first thing the mayor said was that it was “defiant activism.”
“So if you read my shirt, it says they called us defiant activists, but that’s just a racist’s way of saying ‘good trouble’,” said Winslow-Majette, who is a person of color in addition to being a sexual minority. The expression “good trouble” was coined by the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.
Winslow-Majette said that everyone knows this was never about colors painted on concrete. She said a councilman at a May 26 meeting said symbols don’t matter and don’t change the diversity in a space.
The LGBTQ civil rights leader countered that by saying that of course symbols don’t matter if one’s privilege never needed a symbol to show survival. Winslow-Majette went on to say that Sakia Gunn, a 15-year-old African American lesbian who was stabbed to death in Newark on May 11, 2003, was murdered “because of her label, because of her symbol, because of her life.” Police said the killing was a hate crime.
“Symbols tell us who belongs,” Winslow-Majette said. “Symbols tell us whose stories are worthy of being remembered. Symbols tell our children whether they should stand tall or shrink themselves to fit into a world that was never designed for them.”
For generations, she continued, LGBTQ people have understood the power of symbols because they have survived through them.
Miles, who has survived his share of bullying because of his symbol and because of what he represents, said during his speech that he was raised by two loving fathers. “That sentence alone shouldn’t make a person angry, but for some reason it did. I’ve grown up knowing that the fact that I was raised by two men makes somebody out there furious,” Miles said.
In fourth grade, he said, he began to realize his gender wasn’t what it was supposed to be in his mind. He said he did his research and knew identifying certain ways existed, but he had no idea there was actual medical support for it. Miles said he spent his nights watching videos of transgender people talking about their experiences, surgeries, and thought processes.
“I cried over those videos, not because they were sad, but because I thought what these people were doing and the joy that they felt when they finally had a body that made sense to them was out of reach for me,” he said.
The crowd cheered in support as he wiped away tears throughout his speech. Miles said he said he circled through so many different labels in fifth grade: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary.
And then, finally, in sixth grade, he came out to his parents and schoolmates as transgender. He began identifying with certain pronouns and changed his name. “I was severely bullied, not physically, but emotionally.”
Miles said he remembers most vividly a text about him sent to his friend by someone Miles didn’t even know. The texter hoped Miles fell into a ditch and died.
Adding to Miles’ angst was the country’s ideological shift to the right as Trump was voted into office for the second time. That had Miles beginning to believe that if the United States wasn’t a safe space for people like him, then there was no place for him in this world. “I questioned whether, in a society like that, life was worth living,” Miles said.
He said his community needs the town’s support regardless of what other holiday is coming up and regardless of whether the steps need repair. “Put up flags, paint the streets rainbow, throw the largest Pridefest West Orange has ever seen,” he said, as the volume of his voice grew and the crowd cheered.
David, Miles’ father, commented the next day in a phone interview about his son’s speech. “Oh my God, it was awesome. That was the first time he spoke in public like that, and we’ve been encouraging him to speak out and to raise his voice. We’re very proud,” said David, who has been married to his husband, Harry, since 2017. The two met in 1993.
David said that Miles was always a pretty quiet kid when he was younger, but as soon as he talked to him and his husband about his identity, “he just blossomed.”
David said Miles has a great group of friends. “They come to our house. Our house is like an open door. It’s like anyone can come. He brings his friends home from school, and we’re just there to support all the children.”
Miles loves art and has been drawing since he was about 3. He now attends an art school in Montclair. He’s very savvy about digital art and wants to do web cartoons. Miles also is working toward his junior black belt in karate and loves K-pop music. Miles also likes his alone time and takes that when he needs to. But he also spends time on the phone and on social media texting and group-chatting with his friends.
He’s “just a typical, sometimes annoying teenager,” David said with a laugh. Moreover, Miles is “a really kind-hearted person. He hates seeing homeless people. I remember one time he saw a homeless person, and he just started sobbing.”
Miles’ dream, David said, has always been to open up a big hotel for homeless people and help them in other ways including by raising money for them. David said that Miles will stand up for his friends and they’ll also stand up for him.
“He’s a good kid,” David said.
–Additional reporting by News Editor Spencer Watson.
