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Covid-19 Update

Greetings from Spirit of America,

On behalf of our SOA staff, we hope you and your family have remained safe and healthy during these pass few months. We thank you for your continued patience this year as we have navigated through an unprecedented season.

It is with regretful news that we have learned that the Macy’s Parade and Entertainment Group have made much needed and anticipated changes to this year’s Parade. The decision that most directly affects our performers is to only allow adult participation in the Parade this year. This will exclude our Spirit of America Cheerleaders and Dancers from performing this year. Our age group is 13 – 18 years of age. We have a long standing relationship with Macy’s and accept and respect their decision on how to best produce the event safely in this current environment.

With this in mind, we are offering two options to those currently registered.

  1. Receive a full refund in the form of a check.
  2. Apply your 2020 payment to reserve your spot for 2021 AND be locked into the 2020 package price for next year.

We ask that you respond to this email and reply to us by August 15th. Please include the first and last name of those registered and let us know if you wish to have a refund or apply the payment for 2021.

Please read below direct communication from Macy’s and the decisions they have made for this year’s event.

Parade Partners,

Thank you for your patience as I know each of you have been eager for an update regarding our plans for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year.  Every day for the past 4 months, we’ve discussed internally how to safely produce the Parade in this current environment.  As most of you are aware, the Macy’s Parade has only been canceled three times during World War II, marching on despite turbulent moments in our nation’s history and serving as a beacon of hope and joy to millions. 

Following our safe, successful and innovative production of Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks, we intend to similarly reimagine and produce the 94th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We are currently exploring a number of contingency plans in tandem with our federal, state and local agency partners, our broadcast partner NBC, as well as health and safety experts. Together we will determine the best course of action to bring this important celebration to New Yorkers and the nation. To that end, we are proactively reinventing every area of this iconic event following CDC guidelines, as well as New York City and state regulations, and will be making significant changes to enhance safety protocols for our participants and colleagues.

As we work through the process for enhancing safety across every area of the Parade, at this time we can communicate a few of these key measures. This year’s enhanced safety protocols will include:

  • Participant and colleague wellness checks performed at all pre-Parade events and on Thanksgiving Day.
  • A significantly scaled back number of total Parade participants, anticipated to be at least 60%.
  • Limiting participation to adults only on the Parade route.
  • The implementation of a number of social distancing measures, wherever possible, inclusive of providing and mandating face coverings for all participants, staff and ticketed guests. 
  • Deferring performances by selected regional marching bands to next year and working to add locally based entertainment. 

 These are unprecedented times and we anticipate making additional safety enhancements and working through other challenges with each passing week.  We are fully committed to responsibly producing this annual celebration and will work through and finalize contingency plans with NBC and the numerous New York City agencies, as well as federal and state partners that help us produce this annual celebration.

Once again, we appreciate your patience and understanding this year. We value your decision to perform with Spirit of America and hope you join us in New York City in the future!

CHEERS!

Spirit of America

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