Pride Weekend began Friday afternoon with more than a 1,000 or or so revelers gathered in Dolores Park to celebrate with a Trans March that included signing, poetry and politics.
Mayor Ed Lee and Scott Wiener arrived and they and other political leaders were were promptly booed off the stage before being able to speak to the crowd.
Ashley Love, a transexual journalist, was one of the many to speak out against Supervisor Wiener.
“I’m tired of people using our community as a prop. A political prop,” Love said. “I’m tired of politicians coming here for five minutes and doing a sound bite and running off. But do they really care about us? Weiner is against homelessness. A lot of trans are suffering from being homeless.
Love continued to press on about this year’s increased levels of police at Pride. “The police have taken over Pride. Trans people of color are at high risk of police brutality. I’m not going to go on Sunday. Why would I want to go and be subject to harm and discrimination?”
Love pretty much summed up the feeling of many at the march where “Police out of Pride,” was a popular sign. SF Gate reported that some organizations including “Black Lives Matter, the Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project and St. James Infirmary” dropped out of the parade to protest the police presence.
Gary McCoy, a reader, pointed out that State Senator Mark Leno and others were also booed off the platform. He included the video below in his comment.
Friday’s event was the 13th trans march in San Francisco. The theme this year was “Embracing our Legacy, We are Still Here.”
The celebration left the park for a march to Civic Center where the city unveiled a new street sign at Turk and Taylor named for the Gene Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of August 1966 when police tried to prevent transgender people from gathering at the Compton cafe in the Tenderloin.
People who don’t even live here boo local politicians off stage, even when they have no clue as to what those politicians have actually done for us. And people don’t want more police presence when ISIS has actually said they plan to bomb the Golden Gate Bridge? You PRIVILEGED liberal motherfuckers have NO IDEA. You only know how to say negative things, boo people, and trash Dolores Park. You haven’t a clue about what people did before you, of all the effort it took, of all the politicking that had to go on. You folks should be ashamed of yourselves for trashing Mark Leno and Scott Wiener. You may not believe in them politically, but they’ve both done a LOT for us, no, not high-profile things, but behind the scenes politicking that is necessary for this city to get anywhere politically.
San Francisco, the loser city were everyone wants a free ride. They would vote for Hitler if he promised them subsidized housing.
And, of course, throwing in the H word invalidates everything you said.
Oh, and great pix!!
Mark Leno wanted to parachute in, get mic time, hog the press cameras, and present his 789th useless proclamation and have his fag butt kissed. Um, did he finally get the message NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL from the usual ambitious pols trolling for votes?
Questions also need to be asked of Trans March organizers: Why the eff did you invite ANY pol to speak? Let’s reclaim community events from the pols and corporations and address our serious housing concerns.
Before idiot Leno says there’s a time a place for holding him and pols accountable, lemme say that time in any time fed up queers decide.
Mark my words, Leno is just waiting for Pelosi to retire so he can run for Congress. What will Leno do now that he’s termed out and wants to place his protege Little Wiener in the D11 seat?
Leno = Wiener.
This is very disingenuous to what actually happened. It should read State Senator Mark Leno was called a piece of shit and boo’d off the stage. Disappointing. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ddOtl27AJg
Gary Thanks for adding the video. We were not trying to leave Leno out, the photographer was paying attention to something else at that time.
Best, Lydia
Just to point out as a san Francisco resident who lives in the Tenderloin (Ashley does not even live in SF) trans person who was there and participated in the booing.
The booing started as Ed Lee and Scott Weiner took the stage. We were booing and calling for them to get off the stage. Mark just happen to be speaking.
The focused turned to Mark Leno (a privileged cisgender male,) when he started to tell us, the trans community to “pay attention”, quite down, & be nice. He escalated it.
He then continued after getting off stage to lash out and tell trans people that they should be ashamed of themselves.
Mark has some apologizing to do to the trans community before he comes to another trans community event to tell us what he has done for us.