Google celebrates NYC Pride with digital monument on Christopher Street

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a new augmented reality interactive monument brings users to Christopher Street Park, in front of the Stonewall Inn, and features the history of the LGBTQ rights movement.

The project by the LGBT Community Center, the National Park Service, and Google, called Stonewall Forever, can be accessed anywhere on a desktop, phone, or augmented reality app, and aims at preserving and expanding the reach of LGBTQ rights history.

The “living monument” features thousands of pieces containing pride stories, allows users to add their own through images and text, and includes a short documentary directed by Ro Haber that “brings together voices from over 50 years of LGBTQ activism to explore life before, during and after the Stonewall Riots,” a statement says.

“We were proud to serve as the conduit to the community to bring a wide variety of voices to the narrative, particularly from people of color, young people and the trans community, and are honored to be part of preserving LGBTQ history,” Glennda Testone, executive director of the LGBT Community Center, said in a statement.

Users can scroll through several collections of content— with video, audio, images, and text— including “Life Before Stonewall,” the “Stonewall Riots,” “The First Year of Pride,” “50 Years of Pride,” “Activism Then and Now,” and “Love and Solidarity.” Some of the monument’s contributors include journalist Derek Blasberg; activists Chella Man, Alok Vaid-Menon, and Achebe Powell; and celebrities Lena Waithe, Naomi Campbell, and Lea DeLaria.

“I came on to this project to show an inter-generational portrait of activism from the time of Stonewall up to today—It’s so important to look to our queer elders for their perspective about how to tackle the struggles we continue to face,” Ro Haber, director of the Stonewall Forever documentary, said in a statement. “We need to show the varied faces of queer and trans activism; we are not a monolith and will never be.”