It was a reason to celebrate at this year's New York City Pride for Chelsea Manning. Celebrating her first Pride as a free woman, the soldier rode on the American Civil Liberties Union float for part of the parade before joining Grand Marshal Gavin Grimm in his car.
Related | Chelsea Manning Shares First Portrait as a Free Woman
Having opened up for the first time on camera earlier this month with ABC News' Juju Chang, Manning accepted responsibility for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, saying that she eventually stopped seeing the numbers in case reports and started gaining a deeper understanding that these were real people. "No one told me to do this," she said, "no one directed me to do this. This is me. This is on me."
In a tweet Manning said she was "honored" to represent the ACLU, which provided her legal representation while she fought for the availability of her hormone therapy in jail. "[I] lost my voice from screaming so much," she wrote. "Thank you."
