At the start of this year Mayor Eric Adams hired former City Council member and pastor Fernando Cabrera to the position of senior advisor for the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnership. Cabrera is known for his connection to the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom which aims to restrict queer rights nationally and abroad. Around this same time, Mayor Adams hired Erick Salgado, another anti-LGBTQ pastor, as an assistant commissioner for immigrant affairs. Local LGBTQ leaders rallied outside City Hall in February and demanded his office rescind their appointments. He instead affirmed their roles in his administration. 

Mayor Adams also made it clear his intent to bring back the vice squad, an abusive group of cops that disproportionately targeted marginalized groups - particularly TGNC people of color. That his administration invited the same activists and leaders who rallied against him at City Hall in February to his upcoming Pride Reception demonstrates less an intent of goodwill and more of an effort to appease however briefly his interest in our community’s welfare while reinforcing the violent institutions that harm LGBTQ people every day. We will not celebrate Pride with him. 

Mayor Adams has tested the boundaries of the LGBTQ community to see where he can overstep - including who he can afford to disregard for the sake of his own interests. Mayor Adams only interests are his own and prioritizing the needs of the policing and surveillance institutions in the city at the expense of investments into education, mental health, community health, and LGBTQ services. We call on our allies, our endorsed candidates and representatives, to join us at our solidarity event at a local LGBTQ+ establishment as we boycott the Mayor’s Pride Reception.

We further demand the following:

• Fire Fernando Cabrera and Erick Salgado - whose views on the LGBTQ community are dangerous and reflect a clear rift in trust between LGBTQ leaders and the Adams administration

• Establish clearer goals for administration's focus on supporting the LGBTQ community in New York City, including the redevelopment of the Unity Project

• Stop the raids on homeless camps that further do harm to the welfare of individuals impacted by the expansive neglect of city administrations.

• Rescind his decision to bring back plainclothes officers, which disproportionately use physical force against Black and Latino individuals, including LGBTQ+ individuals

• Commit to ending the use of solitary confinement, which contributed to the death of marginalized individuals including Layleen Polanco, a 27-year old transgender woman of color who died in 2019 on the same day the Adams administration chose to hold their Pride Reception

Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn

Stonewall Democrats of NYC

Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens

Equality New York