'They're icons': US women's champion team take victory parade in New York

Amid confetti and chants of “equal pay” New York honored the U.S. women’s soccer team on Wednesday with a ticker-tape parade down the “Canyon of Heroes,” celebrating its World Cup triumph and paying tribute to the players’ emergence as “icons” of women’s rights.

The squad’s 2-0 win over Netherlands in the final match on Sunday capped a World Cup campaign that attracted vast television audiences and unprecedented public interest.

Wednesday’s parade down Broadway in New York’s financial district also cast a light on the team’s fight for equal pay with their counterparts on the U.S. men’s national team, and by extension, the issue of equal pay for equal work for women in general.
 

As the parade kicked off, families pressed up again the metal police barriers, eager to catch a glimpse of players like Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe, the tournament’s top scorer and an outspoken team leader, as they rode on open floats along the parade route.

“It’s my absolute honor to lead this team out on the field,” Rapinoe said addressing the crowds from City Hall after the parade. “There’s no other place that I would rather be. Even in the presidential race. I’m busy, sorry.”

Rapinoe, who has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump and his administration, called for people to “hate less”.

“This is my charge to everyone: We have to be better. We have to love more. Hate less. We got to listen more and talk less… It’s our responsibility to make the world a better place.”
 

"It's my absolute honor to lead this team out on the field," Megan Rapinoe says. "There's no other place that I would rather be. Even in the presidential race. I'm busy, sorry." https://t.co/7LJHPDVRm9 pic.twitter.com/ADUGFuRluW

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 10, 2019