Video of Scott Wiener, the San Francisco state senator who is vying to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress, being confronted at the Trans March on Friday is spreading rapidly online: As Wiener walked through Dolores Park for the kick-off event of Pride weekend, he was accosted by several people calling out his support for Israel.
“It sucks because you’ve been wonderful for trans people, and you’ve been terrible … on Gaza,” said Dimitry Yakoushkin, who filmed the encounter of Wiener walking through the park surrounded by screams of “Fuck you!” “We fucking hate you!” and many middle fingers.
Wiener started calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide earlier this year after pressure, but he has historically been supportive of Israel and is more critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government than the country itself. Local pro-Palestine groups have long vocally opposed Wiener.
Wiener soon exited the park, followed by several people yelling after him. He issued a press release on Saturday morning saying he was “verbally and physically” harassed, “including physical contact,” and that he felt unsafe enough to leave.
“I left the park and, for the very first time, did not participate in the trans march.” He said he has “no objection” to disagreement, but that “harassment, including cornering me, touching me, or trying to physically bully me out of a public event … crosses a line.”
Connie Chan, Wiener’s congressional rival, appeared to march unmolested.
Yakoushkin, the man who filmed the encounter, is a local activist who often confronts officials in public on their stances. He said the protest was spontaneous. “It was not planned, I was walking home, and I saw him from a distance and I got my camera out to start filming.”
Video of the incident has been viewed millions of times online and was shared by national reporters, Democratic Party operatives, and high-profile right-wing accounts. A New York Post headline blared: “Humiliation for would-be Pelosi successor.”
Wiener is far from the only San Francisco politician run out of Trans March, going back at least a decade.
In 2016, Mayor Ed Lee was similarly booed. Standing on stage alongside David Chiu (then a State Assembly member, today the city attorney), then-State Senator Mark Leno and Wiener, Lee was forced to walk off before he had a chance to speak.
“Mayor Ed Lee and Scott Wiener arrived and they and other political leaders were promptly booed off the stage before being able to speak to the crowd,” Mission Local reported at the time. “I’m tired of people using our community as a prop. A political prop,” one attendee, transexual journalist Ashley Love, said then. “I’m tired of politicians coming here for five minutes and doing a sound bite and running off.”
The protests did not only target moderates. Video from the 2016 incident shows Leno, a gay man and a progressive politician, trying to calm the crowd after the jeers started. “Are we about love or crowd hate?” he asked. “Folks, I have to ask you, should I get off the stage?” The crowd claps and chants, and Leno puts his arm on Lee before walking off stage with the other politicos.
The protest at the time was, at least partly, over Lee and Wiener’s approach to homelessness; both had supported more aggressive enforcement against sidewalk tents. The crowd chanted “Housekeys not handcuffs!” as the officials left the park.
Mayor Daniel Lurie last year was also met with jeers and confronted by several people who chased him from the event.
“You are not wanted here. You are not wanted here,” one person wearing a spiky tiara with a trans flag in their hair told the mayor, according to a video from Yakoushkin, the same man who filmed Wiener’s booing this year.
Lurie was subsequently dogged by chants of “How dare you come here?” as he continued to walk through Dolores Park. The mayor and his security detail soon left.
Wiener’s Saturday morning press release said he’s attended the Trans March for 22 years “in solidarity with our trans siblings, who are facing existential threats from right wing extremists.”
But the taunts and physical threats were too much, he said.
“We’re living in a time when violence is all too often threatened or used against people in public life. In San Francisco, we’re better than that.”
Yakoushkin, for his part, said he had received calls from the New York Times and other outlets. National media and others online, he feared, would conflate the incident with the homophobic and antisemitic attacks Wiener, who has become a favorite target of the right wing, faces near daily.
“I think homophobia is disgusting and antisemitism is disgusting, but what happened in the park is not that,” he said. “It’s unfortunate this is being conflated and that homophobes and antisemitic folks are hopping on this as a bandwagon. We hate him for very different reasons, and we do not include those folks. They’re worse than Scott.”
