Under the direction of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and a mandate from the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation, dozens of workers from Florida’s Department of Transportation (FDOT) on Sunday evening bulldozed and sledgehammered an iconic Pride crosswalk located in the center of the predominantly gay South Beach neighborhood in Miami.

The unilateral destruction of the terrazzo landmark on Ocean Drive was undertaken without any notice, a Miami Beach official said.

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The crosswalk’s removal comes after FDOT ordered local governments, including Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Boynton Beach, and Key West, to remove pavement art “associated with social, political, or ideological messages.”  

A crowd of onlookers, including beachgoers, residents, and drag queens from local bars and clubs, formed as the workers destroyed the brick crosswalk.

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“Put a mask on so nobody sees who you are! You’re ashamed!” one bystander shouted, according to the Miami Herald. “You feel good about this?”

Drag artists CC Glitzer, Akasha O’Hara Lords, and TP Lords were preparing for a show at the Palace Bar & Restaurant when word of the crosswalk’s destruction spread up and down Ocean Drive. 

“It’s very emotional to see that our people and our pride is getting erased just like that. It’s very painful,” said CC Glitzer, who moved to Miami Beach from Germany.

“This is where we perform, where we live, where we show our craft and our art,” she said.

The drag trio chanted “Miami Beach Forever Proud!” as they waved signs with the same slogan.

“They can erase the colors out of the street, but they can never remove the colors out of people,” Glitzer said.

Miami Beach didn’t get notice of the “army of workers and heavy machinery” on Ocean Drive, said one of the city commissioners, Alex Fernandez.

Despite the destruction and both DeSantis and Trump’s efforts to “chip away” at LGBTQ+ identity “one brick at a time,” Miami Beach will remain proud and inclusive, Fernandez said.

“The Rainbow Crosswalk,” designed by Savino Miller Studio, was dedicated in November 2018.

For years, the Palace Bar had painted a rainbow crosswalk on Ocean Drive to mark the intersection as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community. Miami Beach made it permanent with the Art Deco design.

Rather than the traditionally bright colors of the rainbow flag, the studio chose pastel versions in a nod to the prevalence of those colors in Miami Beach’s architecture and the resort town’s revival in the 1970s and 80s.

In July, in collusion with the Trump administration, DeSantis signed a law directing the FDOT “to ensure compliance” with the department’s “uniform system for traffic control devices.” The law bans all pavement art and murals, including rainbow crosswalks.

That law followed a directive from former reality TV personality turned U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, ordering the nation’s governors to keep all non-freeway intersections and crosswalks “free from distractions.”

In a subsequent post to X, Duffy said derisively that “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” and implied the colorful intersections were responsible for traffic fatalities.

In September, protesters across the state took to the streets to advocate against the crosswalk removals.

Hundreds of people marched in Miami Beach on September 2 in the “Forever Proud March” organized by Miami Beach Commissioner Fernandez and the Greater Miami LGBT Chamber of Commerce. The demonstration followed a smaller protest in Fort Lauderdale the day before, which saw dozens of people rallying on a local beach with rainbow flags and signs reading, “We will not be erased.”

Another protest erupted at the site of the Pulse Memorial in Orlando, dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting at the gay nightclub in 2016.

FDOT painted over that crosswalk multiple times, as protesters returned over and over again to recreate it.

At least four people were arrested, including protesters at a “Chalk for Pride” demonstration, as they defied authorities.

“The facts are clear – our rainbow crosswalk is in fact safer than some of our other crosswalks along Ocean Drive,” Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez wrote in an Instagram post before the Art Deco crosswalk’s destruction.

“What’s not good for safety is erasing symbols of inclusion – actions that embolden intolerant behavior. I will fight to protect it for our safety, for our freedom, for our dignity, and for the values Miami Beach will never back down from.”

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