With its controversial history, Manhattan's St Patrick's Day parade
has become an event where ideas of Irishness collide, writes FRIEDA
KLOTZ
ON A WEDNESDAY evening in the middle of January, about 150 men and
women gathered in the president's room of the New York Athletic Club,
just by Central Park. Many Irish-American associations were
represented: the United Irish Counties, the Gaelic Societies, the
various Emerald Guilds and Holy Name Societies, the Ancient Order of
Hibernians and its women's counterpart the Ladies Ancient Order of
Hibernians, and others.
Everyone in the room stood up and said an Our Father and then a Hail
Mary. John Dunleavy, originally from Coole, Co Westmeath, and now from
Riverdale in the Bronx, said a prayer for the 251st St Patrick's Day
parade, and then it was time for business.
This was the delegates' meeting of the New York City St Patrick's Day
Parade. It is the biggest Irish parade in the world, drawing up to
three million spectators and watched by millions more on television.
For a day it shuts down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in a spectacle of
green and gold and military display. It is a huge logistical
operation, requiring months of planning, fundraising and liaising with
city authorities.
The committee's 25 men and two women, all volunteers, have decades of
experience. Dunleavy counts 41 years, the past 19 as chairman; Hilary
Beirne, an officer, has helped for 24. Beirne jokes that committee
members' spouses become parade widows from January to March.
During the 1970s and early 1980s the event was plagued by riotous
behaviour, until the police and the parade organisers cracked down.
The committee is still haunted by the cliche of Irish drinking. Strict
rules now ordain how marchers should behave: business attire is
required; no green hats, sneakers or oddball dress; no animals or
mascots; no eating, drinking or smoking.
Dunleavy says there is no desire to return to the unruliness of those
decades. "Alcohol consumption back then was absolutely horrendous," he
says. "They were drunk as skunks along on Fifth Avenue. And then up
along on Central Park, the debauchery that was going on with men and
women – forget about it."
The Fifth Avenue parade is not the only one in New York. Throughout
March, St Patrick's celebrations flower across the city. They have
already taken place in Staten Island and Sunnyside, in Queens, and
will soon be on in the Bronx (tomorrow) and Brooklyn (March 18th).
These events are not so much about Ireland as about being Irish in the
US. "It's a people reinterpreting their identity and reasserting their
understanding of it in another country," says Peter Quinn, a writer
whose ancestors came over to the US in 1847. He is a co-grand marshal
of the parade in Queens. "The minute the Irish got off the boat in New
York they were no longer Irish – they were still Irish, but they were
becoming something else."
But as the largest St Patrick's celebration in the city, the Fifth
Avenue event has become the most fraught – a hub where different
ideals of Irishness meet and often collide. Until the 1990s, it was
sponsored by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, self-described as "a
Catholic, fraternal organisation", and many on the parade committee
are still Hibernian members.
As some parts of the Irish community have grown more liberal,
divisions have opened up, and gay and lesbian groups have protested
vociferously at their exclusion.
Organisers point out that gay individuals are free to march, just not
to publicise their sexuality. But activists such as Brendan Fay say
this is an attempt to push them back into the closet.
"Ordinary decent people roll their eyes and wonder what it's all
about," says Fay, who was arrested multiple times for attempting to
participate in the Fifth Avenue parade. He eventually founded the St
Pat's for All parade, a smaller festival going through Sunnyside and
Woodside that espouses a deliberately inclusive ethos.
Last month the Consul General of Ireland, Noel Kilkenny, held a party
for the St Pat's for All parade at his residence, at which its grand
marshals were announced. It was the first time this had happened (and
another first: the Government sent Minister of State Kathleen Lynch to
St Pat's for All as its representative). Several politicians attended,
including the 84-year-old former mayor of New York David Dinkins.
Dinkins's presence was symbolic. Back in 1991 Dinkins, who was New
York's first African-American mayor, marched with the Irish Lesbian
and Gay Organisation, whose participation was extremely controversial,
instead of at the head of the parade. A report from the time in the
New York Times describes how the mayor was forced to duck to avoid
beer cans that hurtled through the air in his direction.
Tensions also flared among the Hibernians themselves. The parade of
1993 was almost cancelled, as a split occurred between those in favour
of and those against gay inclusion. Two years later the US supreme
court came to a decision on the Boston parade, which also held for New
York: under the first amendment, parade sponsors had a right to
exclude marchers whose message they reject.
The Fifth Avenue parade has swum in complex political waters
throughout its history. In 1983, an 81-year-old named Michael Flannery
was chosen as grand marshal. He had been a founder of Noraid, a
fundraising organisation set up after the start of the Troubles, and
was an open supporter of the IRA. In a gesture that made headlines,
Cardinal Terence Cooke declined to shake Flannery's hand. Today the
parade's website still states: "The only banners allowed are ones
identifying the unit or 'England Get Out of Ireland'." Only a handful
of groups choose that message, but Dunleavy says that for now it will
remain. "My policy is that until there's a united Ireland it should
stay there."
At a reception for the grand marshal and aides of the Fifth Avenue
parade at Antun's, a restaurant, late last month, there was little
hint of this fractious past. Irish America was on display in its most
familiar and traditional forms: green tablecloths and orange napkins
on the tables, girls in green dresses and boys sporting green ties.
Noel Kilkenny was there, as was the New York senator Chuck Schumer,
who sponsored the E3 visa Bill on immigration earlier this year. After
dinner, a band played 1960s hits interspersed with jigs. Eddie Fee, a
dark-haired 48-year-old from Woodside, did a skilful reel.
After his dance Fee suggested that "people in Ireland are trying to
get away from there and people in New York are trying to go back."
It's an apt definition of the Irish-American paradox.
Yet values have changed and are still changing, both in Ireland and in
New York. Donal O'Conghaile, a 23-year-old from Boyle, in Co
Roscommon, arrived in New York on March 17th last year and now works
in online marketing. "Being Irish is seen very favourably, and people
automatically like you when they hear that you're Irish," he says.
As a young gay man, however, he finds the parade committee's refusal
to allow homosexual groups to march disturbing. "I guess they see the
parade as a family thing and somehow gay groups aren't family
friendly. But it is ridiculous, and I cannot imagine it going on for
much longer."
To Donal Foreman, a 26-year-old film-maker, critic and teacher, the
issue is "ridiculous and offensive. It's supposed to be a parade
representing Ireland. Any community or group from Ireland should be
allowed to participate."
Foreman is not keen to engage with the Fifth Avenue parade's brand of
Irishness. "Some people when they come out like to surround themselves
with Irish people and be part of that culture, but one of the reasons
I came was to engage with everything else," he says. "There is so much
going on that I couldn't get in Ireland. I don't find myself pining
for that kind of stuff."
Complex route The parade's divided history
During the 19th century the Ancient Order of Hibernians became the
official sponsor of the New York City St Patrick's Day Parade.
The parade has a storied history, but the past 20 years have generated
a wealth of controversy, as tensions flared within the Irish
community, with New York city officials, and within the order itself.
In 1991 rifts began to appear that would lead to what the Irish Echo
called a "battle over the shape and future of the parade". The county
board of the Hibernians sued the state board of the Hibernians and, as
part of the subsequent agreement, the parade chairman resigned. In
1992, the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the Irish
Lesbian and Gay Organisation (Ilgo) also brought a case against the
Hibernians for excluding gay groups, but the federal judge declined to
intervene.
A year later, an Irish Echo headline ran "Parade War Getting Nasty".
When some Hibernians who favoured gay participation obtained the
parade permit from the city, the Hibernians' national president called
for a boycott. The gay-friendly faction withdrew. Celebrations went
ahead without a grand marshal, and 230 members and supporters of Ilgo
were arrested in protests – a pattern that would continue, to a lesser
extent, throughout that decade.
Today an independent committee is responsible for the parade. John
Dunleavy, the committee chairman, was at one point a member of the
Hibernians, but he says he "kind of dropped out".
Dunleavy says the Hibernians "participate in the parade but, as
regards running the parade, they don't have any say". The parade is
run by St Patrick's Day Parade Inc.
More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0310/1224313099212.html
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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