“We don’t do a parade just to be festive. From the beginning this has been a community-led effort to keep ourselves safe in a neighborhood with a long history of over-policing Puerto Ricans,” said Dennis Flores, founder of El Grito’s Sunset Park Puerto Rican Parade and Festival, which returns this weekend.
Organizers, dancers, and musicians are preparing this week for the annual Sunset Park Puerto Rican Parade and Festival, which will take place Sunday, starting at 5 p.m. on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue and 59th Street.
First launched in 2015—although suspended for two years during the pandemic—the parade began as a safe cultural after-party for the Annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan. When local attendees would return to Sunset Park and gather together in the evening, they often clashed with police in tense post-parade crackdowns.
“We don’t do a parade just to be festive. From the beginning, this has been a community-led effort to keep ourselves safe in a neighborhood with a long history of over-policing Puerto Ricans,” said Dennis Flores, founder of El Grito’s Sunset Park Puerto Rican Parade and Festival and an activist who recorded those local clashes with the NYPD…