Florida’s Midnight Act of Erasure: Pulse Memorial Crosswalk Painted Over in Orlando, Protesters Repaint
- Saint Trey Wooden
- 33 minutes ago
- 3 min read
News & Opinion
Under cover of night, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) erased more than just paint from a city street. It stripped away a symbol of survival.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, state crews quietly painted over the rainbow crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub memorial in Orlando, replacing it with the dull monotony of black-and-white stripes. By sunrise, what had stood for eight years as both mourning and defiance was gone.
For survivors, families, and LGBTQ+ Floridians, the act like landed like salt in a wound that has never fully closed.
"In the middle of the night, FDOT painted over our rainbow crosswalk at the Pulse Memorial," Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, a Democrat representing Orlando, posted on X.
"A tragedy tha we have worked so hard to find power in pain. A rainbow crosswalk that sparked joy and showed our love for all people."
Eskamani said Orlando officials had been working with state protocols to preserve the crosswalk. "This is incredibly shameful," she said in an interview. " Doing it in the middle of the night emphasizes that you're trying to hide your bigotry."
Survivors call it desecration
The rainbow crosswalk was installed in 2017, one year after 49 mostly LGBTQ+ people were killed and 53 others injured at Pulse in what was, at the time, the deadliest attack on queer people in U.S. history. It quickly became one of the memorial's most visible markers -- a site where grief and love coexisted in color.
On Thursday, that color was erased without warning.
"They illegally vandalized city property without providing the City of Orlando notice or getting their approval," said former State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, the first openly gay Latino elected to Florida legislature. He called the move a "hostile act" by Gov. Ron DeSantis's administration.
Brandon Wolfe, who survived the Pulse massacre but lost friends that night, put it more bluntly: "In the dark of the night, they came to erase our show of solidarity, our declaration that we will never forget," he wrote on X. "The cowards who feel threatened by our lives should feel lucky that they didn't have to bury the ones they love -- then watch the state come & desecrate their memory."
Officials denounce 'cruel political act'
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer condemned the removal as "a cruel political act," noting the crosswalk has been installed by the state itself and complied with safety standards. " While the state works to erase the memory of the victims of the Pulse tragedy by painting over the crosswalk, our community's commitment to honoring the 49...will never waver," he said.
City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, Orlando's first openly gay elected official, echoed the outrage: "We did everything according to state law, everything was complaint. FDOT never moves that quickly with anything."
The action comes just weeks after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched an initiative aimed at banning "political messages" from crosswalks, including rainbow designs. Federal officials have admitted there is no evidence that such crosswalks endanger drivers. Advocates argue they enhance visibility while affirming identity.
A Scathing Truth
Let us name this for what it is: fascist theater. Painting over a rainbow does not make the grief disappear. Scrubbing away color will not cleanse Florida of its bloodstained history, not silence queer survival. What FDOT did in the dark of night was not about safety. It was about erasure.
And erasure is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. It is the state declaring that even in death, queer people cannot be honored publicly. That our joy, our mourning, our symbols of defiance must be made invisible.
But here is the state's miscalculation: the rainbow is not just pigment on pavement. It lives in the bodies of the people who survived, in the voices of the families who refuse to be silenced, in every Orlando resident who still kneels at that site and remembers the names of the 49.
They can whitewash the crosswalk, but they cannot whitewash history.
A Vow
The Pulse Memorial remains sacred ground, even when stripped bare. And as Mayor Dyer said, Orlando's commitment will not waver. The community has already begun calling for the colors to be restored, even daring lawsuits against the state.
This fight is not about asphalt. It is about whether queer life is allowed to be visible, honored, and remembered in public space.
To paint over the rainbow is to spit on the graves of the dead, to silence the living, to attempt, once again, to make queer grief and queer joy disappear.
But we are still here. We remember, and no coat of paint can change that.