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People watch the St Patrick's Day Parade on 5th Avenue in New York City AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

New York City mayor refuses to take part in St Patrick's Day parade

Bill de Blasio says he will not walk in the parade because of the ban on participants from carrying signs for gay rights.

THE NEW MAYOR of New York City has said he will not take part in this year’s St Patrick’s Day parade in the city because of the ban on participants from carrying gay rights signs.

Democrat Bill de Blasio told a press conference last night that he did not want to be part of the event.

“I simply disagree with the organisers of the parade in their exclusion of some individuals in this city,” he said.

It has become a tradition for the mayor of the city, which has a high Irish emigrant population, to walk in the parade. De Blasio will be the first mayor in two decades not to take part.

The mayor said he still planned to take part in other events on St Patrick’s Day “to honour the Irish heritage of this city and the contribution of Irish-Americans”.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny took part in last year’s St Patrick’s Day parade on 5th Avenue and met with then-mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Parade organisers have come under increasing pressure to overturn the rules about participants carrying signs about gay rights, but have said that the event is solely about celebrating the city’s Irish heritage. Gay and lesbian groups can participate but are not allowed to display any banners about gay rights.

An alternative gay-friendly parade takes place in Queens, another borough of New York, every year which De Blasio attended in his previous job as public advocate for the city.

The New York City parade is one of the biggest in the world, with more than one million people lining Fifth Avenue every year to watch around 200,000 participants.

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NYC mayor Bill de Blasio speaking in the city last month. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Column: Boston and NYC  a tale of two new mayors >

Read: Looks like this city won’t have a St Patrick’s Day Parade for the third year in a row >

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    Mute honey badger
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    Jan 22nd 2025, 8:56 AM

    Student union politics for grown-ups.

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    Mute Nigel Hayden
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    Jan 22nd 2025, 10:16 AM

    @honey badger: guess you’ve never seen the behaviour in the Dail

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    Mute David Cotter
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    Jan 22nd 2025, 9:02 AM

    He needs to talk to Michael lowery……that’s the man running this dail
    He’s a miracle worker could get eoin a committee job

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    Mute K O
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    Jan 22nd 2025, 10:12 AM

    @David Cotter: not a word from wokie Holly about all this, I suppose too busy enjoying life in her monstrous family home.

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 10:23 AM

    @K O: Having kids is woke?

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 9:04 AM

    The suspension is the most Juvenile thing I have ever heard. He will be back in the party in a month and it will all be forgotten .

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 10:30 AM

    Nothing to do with having kids? Every single

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 10:31 AM

    @K O: statement she makes is woke,

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 11:27 AM

    What a strong Opposition we have lol

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 12:13 PM

    Only a matter of time before Owen Hanley is back.

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 1:26 PM

    The debating society are still meeting

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 8:20 PM

    The Social Democrats are easily the worst party in the Dáil along with the other far-left clowns in PBP. Holly Cairns is a radical extremist and her vitriolic and obsessive anti-Israel behaviour and suspension of the TD Hayes was pretty embarrassing. She’s got a history of this sort of thing though. She blocked one of the party members from running for election because the person was Jewish. It was such an overreaction to begin with. I own shares in Palantir Technologies myself and it’s an excellent company with great AI technology which, among other things, helps aid the war effort of different countries, one of which is Israel. This of course, helps to minimise the number of soldiers who are put in harms way due to vast majority of the houses in Gaza have already been rigged by Hamas.

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    Jan 22nd 2025, 2:07 PM

    Bring back gino

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