People of Color in Crisis (POCC) and other community leaders and activist are outraged and disappointed at the U.S. Park Service's decision to restrict access to Jacob Riis Beach in Queens during the annual Pride in the City Beach celebration this Sunday.

Pride in the City is an annual celebration that builds and affirms the Black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in New York City. It is the city's premiere Black pride celebration and attract thousands of people each year. This community event has provided free HIV/AIDS testing and has helped to empower the community to raise awareness and combat rates of infection within the city. Pride in the City has taken place peacefully and without incident for the last five years.

This year, however, park officials in charge of the beach have decided to block access to the beach during the celebration. After six months of negotiations, Lisa Eckert, a superintendent for the National Park Services. sent a letter to POCC Executive Director Gary English that cited "violations stemming from previous events" as reason for restricting access to the beach. Eckert stated in her letter that these violations include failure to remove trash from the beach and obstruction of the boardwalk as reasons for restricting access to the beach. Despite these claims, the park service has never reported any "violations" or withheld any money after the event in previous years.

"We picked up the trash and did not obstruct the boardwalk," POCC Executive Director Gary English said. "We left the beach cleaner than we found it."

Park officials said that they would only allow Pride in the City to set up a single tent in the baseball field for HIV testing. Officials also ordered POCC to eliminate scheduled performances that were slated to take place on the beach as part of Pride in the City.

"At the end of the day, this boils down to a question of fairness," English said. "We are calling on our elected leaders to stand up against this insensitive decision and the media to shine a light on this obvious case of discrimination and homophobia."

Pride in the City is a celebration of Black LGBT pride in New York City. POCC and our partner organizations remain hopeful that this celebration will take place as it has for the past five years on Jacob Riis Beach.

People of Color in Crisis (POCC) is a non-profit community based organization that provides a variety of prevention and support services for individuals both infected and affected by the AIDS epidemic.