This town is showing serious LGBTQ pride, and residents are loving it
Maplewood residents of all stripes were out in force Thursday night, celebrating the township’s diversity and inclusion by officially opening a set of crosswalks at a key intersection painted in the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ community.
The famously progressive and picturesque Essex County suburb just west of Newark embraces Pride Month every June. And on Thursday night, hundreds of people converged on the lawn of the columned, red brick municipal building and the adjacent intersection of Valley Street and Oakview Avenue, where pink, red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue and violet bands of color stretched across the streets, linking each of the four corners in a highly visual symbol of LGBTQ pride and acceptance.
Police had closed off the surrounding blocks for the celebration, where children and adults alike seemed mesmerized by the brightly colored intersection, running, sitting and splaying out flat on their backs atop the prismatic pavement.
“I think one of the things that draws people to Maplewood is that they do awesome things like this,” said one local mom, Alyssa Cohan, at the intersection wither her husband, James, and their three sons, Matthew, 10, Jacob, 5, and Griffin, 19 months. “It’s good to be raising kids in this town.”
Maplewood and neighboring South Orange share both a joint school district and a sense of community, and seventh graders Rebecca Cardiello of South Orange and Della Zimmerman of Maplewood, both 13, personified that bond as they posed for iPhone pictures on the colorful crosswalk.
“It shows that Maplewood is…” Zimmerman said, pausing in search of the right word.
“Accepting,” said Cardiello, finishing her friend’s sentence.
The idea for the rainbow crosswalk came to Township Committeeman Dean Dafis this winter, when he was contemplating how to celebrate Maplewood’s diversity year-round, and it dawned on him to address a separate public safety issue at the same time.
“It was my idea to come up with some permanent symbol of our commitment to inclusion in our community,” Dafis, Maplewood’s first openly gay elected official, said Thursday. And, he added, “One of our residents’ biggest concerns in town is pedestrian safety.”
The paint used in the crosswalk is reflective, enhancing the visibility of the crosswalk at night and warning motorists to slow down. At a cost of about $3,000, Dafis called the crosswalk, “a cheap traffic-calming measure.”
Dafis said he had seen temporary versions of rainbow crosswalks created for LGBTQ-related occasions in California and the Dutch capital, Amsterdam. And he said, “This came to mind immediately.”
Among the proud Maplewood residents present Thursday night was Jan Kaminsky, the youth coordinator for North Jersey Pride, an LGBTQ advocacy group. Kaminsky said the set of rainbow crosswalks was, “the first of its kind in New Jersey, that we know of.”
She added, “I want the youth that walk across this crosswalk to know that they’re loved and accepted, right up from the ground they walk on.”
Like Dafis himself, the rainbow intersection is one more example of Maplewood’s inclusiveness. Memorial Park, adjacent to the intersection, is the site of the annual North Jersey Pride festival held every June, including this year’s event scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
A huge rainbow banner draped from Columbia High School’s Gothic tower in June 2016 was a non-issue among students, parents, administrators and municipal officials.
“This represents what we’re about,” Mayor Victor DeLuca said Thursday night, standing in the intersection just after a ribbon cutting ceremony, surrounded by adults and children giddy over the unique new rainbow junction in town.
State Sen. Richard Codey (D-27th District), who was also on hand Thursday, called Maplewood “a model” for inclusion around the state.
Because Valley Street is an Essex County road, the township needed permission from the county to paint the crosswalks, which it received, along with praise from County Executive Joe DiVincenzo.
“I have always said that Essex County’s strength is in its diversity,” DiVincenzo said in a statement Thursday. “And the Rainbow crosswalks in Maplewood is symbolic of the mosaic that makes up our population.”
Rabbi Mark Cooper of the Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange spoke prior to the ribbon cutting.
“If we cannot look our fellow human beings in the eye and see that they are our brothers and our sisters,” Cooper told the crowd, “then we don’t know what it is to be human.”
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook