Residents and members of the LGBT+ community in Miami Beach, Florida, are reeling after the state’s Transportation Department removed a rainbow crosswalk in the city.
The Pride-themed crosswalk, which was placed in the heart of Miami Beach, was removed by a crew from the Florida Department of Transportation on Sunday evening. Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who opposes the decision, told The Independent the removal “shocked our community.”
“To the residents of Miami Beach and our LGBTQ+ tourists from around the world, please know that the removal of this crosswalk was not our decision, it was the State of Florida’s, and we will continue to welcome with open arms and inclusion everyone who visits Miami Beach,” she said.
This marks the latest removal of a rainbow crosswalk after the Florida Department of Transportation issued a memo in June prohibiting road art, including anything with “social, political, or ideological messages or images and does not serve the purpose of traffic control.”
The City Commission unanimously appealed the crosswalk’s removal, but received notice late Friday night the appeal was denied, Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez told The Independent.
“This crosswalk, it represented so much to so many people who, over the decades, endured everything from workplace discrimination, to the stigma of HIV and AIDS, expulsion from the military, housing inequality, of course the long fight for marriage equality,” he said. “These were hard won battles that took us, the gay community, from being marginalized, to being visible, to being included, to being recognized.”
“To see our own government, our own state government that should be here to protect us, to lift all of its people, to waste the taxpayers’ money in coming in and ripping out brick by brick our symbols of inclusion, our symbols of progress, our symbols of safety — it was heartbreaking at best, grotesque at worst,” he added.
A drag performer told local outlet WSVN the crosswalk “represents blood, sweat and tears.”
“I literally worked so hard on this sidewalk for many years and struggled to come out here and perform and share art, share my craft, so it tears my heart to see it go away, but we’re going to fight, we’re not going anywhere,” the performer said.
The state’s order to remove road art is in compliance with a federal directive, Florida Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue said in August, according to Spectrum News 13. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a memo on July 1 telling states to ensure intersections and crosswalks are “kept free from distractions,” including “political messages of any nature.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also said in August that officials have been removing art from across the political spectrum.
“Most of this stuff is, I mean, they had to remove a ‘Back the Blue,’ they had to remove some of these other things, and so it spans different things, but we’ve made the policy decision in Florida that we’re not going to use the roads for that purpose,” DeSantis said.
The Independent has contacted the Florida Department of Transportation for comment.
This comes more than a month after officials removed a rainbow crosswalk outside Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, where a gunman killed 49 people in 2016 in the deadliest attack on LGBT+ people in U.S. history. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer called the removal of the crosswalk a “callous” and “cruel political act.”
“We are devastated to learn that overnight the state painted over the Pulse Memorial crosswalk on Orange Avenue,” Dyer said in a statement. “This callous action of hastily removing part of a memorial to what was at the time our nation’s largest mass shooting, without any supporting safety data, or discussion, is a cruel political act.”
