The board of the organization that plans and hosts NYC Pride has put a five-year ban on law enforcement involvement in the events, even for those in the LGBTQ+ community.

In the ensuing debate, the issue has been distilled into a single question: Who is Pride for? For many, the answer is easy: It’s not for cops. After all, the march commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, in which the NYPD brutally enforced unjust laws that effectively criminalized being gay. The protests that followed became the foundation of the gay rights movement.

For these participants, Pride can only be true to form if it maintains its original anti-establishment bent. Stonewall is — and should always remain — a protest. But if the intervening decades of activism and progress are to have any meaning, Pride also has to be a place for those who have fought for change from within the very establishments that most need reform.