After pushing for increased police presence, three of the grand marshals of San Francisco Pride, including Black Lives Matter, have dropped out of the parade.
San Francisco Pride is the largest LGBTQ+ pride celebration in the country, and its theme this year was “Racial and Economic Justice.” SF Pride appoints grand marshals each year as “public emissaries of Pride.” Black Lives Matter was appointed Organizational Grand Marshal in March, and Black Lives Matter’s Bay Area chapter scheduled to receive Pride’s Lifetime Achievement award. St. James Infirmary, a health and safety clinic for sex workers scheduled to receive the Heritage of Pride award, and the TGI Justice Project, an anti-incarceration advocacy group for transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex people, were also appointed grand marshals.
However, after the announcement on Tuesday that SF Pride would have a “significant police presence,” these three grand marshals met and chose to withdraw from the parade and celebration, though they will still accept their awards.
Concerns about safety at pride celebrations grew after the June 12 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, where 49 LGBTQ+ people were killed and 53 others injured. Along with Orange County and New York, San Fransisco Pride organizers called for heightened security, including security screenings at Civic Center to enter the festival area. This is a first for these celebrations, and it did not go over well with much of the LGBTQ+ community.
“As queer people of color, we are disproportionately targeted by both vigilante and police violence,” said gender non-conforming Black Lives Matter member Malkia Cyril in a press release. “We know first hand that increasing the police presence at Pride does not increase safety for all people. Militarizing these events increases the potential for harm to our communities and we hope in the future SF Pride will consider community-centered approaches to security at pride events.”
The LGBTQ+ community already has a checkered relationship with law enforcement, going back to the 1969 Stonewall uprisings that inspired Pride Month in the first place, making the sudden security announcement surprising to many. A 2012 annual report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs found that 48% of LGBTQ+ people reporting violence to the police encounter police misconduct, while half of LGBTQ+ people who encountered violence did not even attempt to contact law enforcement.
Police discrimination against LGBTQ+ people of color is even worse. Transgender people of color are 2.46 times more likely to face physical violence by the police than white non-transgender people. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, Latinx transgender people are 3 times more likely to be imprisoned than white transgender people, while black transgender people are 6 times more likely. LGBTQ+ people of color also face far more police profiling, physical and sexual harassment from police, as well as denial of routine health care in police custody. The San Francisco LGBT Center found that only 50% of LGBTQ+ people of color and 40% of transgender people of color believed that police would provide them with help if they needed it.
“In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting that took the lives of dozens of queer, trans and gender non-conforming people of color, many people in our community are afraid,” said a statement from TGI Justice Project. “For us, celebrating Pride this year meant choosing between the threat of homophobic vigilante violence and the threat of police violence. We had a tough decision to make, and ultimately we chose to keep our people safe by not participating in any event that would leave our communities vulnerable to either.”
San Francisco Pride board president Michelle Meow expressed her respect for the withdrawal of these three grand marshals. “Increasing police presence in our community is not the solution I will be missing some of you, but I know this is the beginning of something that we’re going to do in San Francisco. We stand here today in support and solidarity of all of our honorees and grand marshals, including Black Lives Matter.”
Meow hopes that SF Pride can find a better solution for the threat of violence next year. “We didn’t have enough time to regroup and rethink our safety. We have to get through this year so we can think about what safety means outside of police protection, because that is not the answer.”
