Officials Shouted Down at SF Trans March

While this year's Trans March ended in celebration with a street renaming after a historic riot, the afternoon got off to a raucous start after several invited elected officials were booed off the stage at Dolores Park.

In a video of the Friday, June 24 event, gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), said, "Should I get off the stage? Am I a piece of shit?" apparently in reference to something someone in the crowd had shouted.

Leno, who's advocated for years on transgender issues, including getting gender identity added to the state Fair Employment and Housing Act, soon left the stage.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and gay Supervisor Scott Wiener also reportedly left the stage after being loudly criticized by the crowd in Dolores Park.

Leno didn't provide comment for this story, and Lee's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter he understands why the trans community is "angry and frustrated."

"The trans community is under enormous pressure and is disproportionately impacted by housing, homelessness, and violence," he said. But, "to attack elected officials who have worked many years to help the trans community is unwarranted.

"I don't care if I get booed, but I was deeply offended that they booed Mark Leno. No elected official on the planet has done more for trans people than Mark."

In a text message, Wiener noted that he has also long worked with the trans community. Most significantly, he got the city's Department of Public Health "to remove the trans health care exclusion" in the Healthy San Francisco universal insurance program "so that trans health care is fully covered. Advocates had tried unsuccessfully for years to do this. I got it done."

He also secured funding for an additional surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital to increase capacity after the trans exclusion was removed.

He added, "I've been attending the Trans March since it started. Long before I was in office or anyone knew who I was. I don't go to the Trans March to score political points. I go because I care deeply about this community. ... Every year - including this year - my office works closely with the Trans March and Dyke March for months and helps them with permits, funding, and departmental coordination."

In a phone interview, Erica Douglas, a spokeswoman for march organizers, said they don't have "an official reaction" to what happened Friday.

"We have not met yet as a group," Douglas said.

"We don't know who booed them," she said. "We don't know anything like that at all. ... We want to get together and talk about what happened." One question is, "Was it staged?" she said.

But one Trans March participant said in an email to the Bay Area Reporter that the three were heckled because of the ongoing housing crisis and concerns about gentrification.

"The Trans March on Friday was an event to celebrate us as transgender people," said Jordan Gwendolyn Davis in an email Tuesday. "However, the event went sour as once again, Scott Wiener and Ed Lee, as well as other moderate politicians in this city, decided to come onto the Trans March stage and speak, eliciting heckling, booing, and even mooning."

Davis said she was one of the leaders of the heckling.

"Transgender people are disproportionately affected by gentrification, and Lee and Wiener's opposition to Prop I in 2015 was hurtful to many of the LGBT and/or Latinx that call the Mission home," Davis said, referring to the failed ballot measure that would have imposed a moratorium on market rate development in the Mission district. "Furthermore, their continued support of criminalizing the homeless, especially a bill Wiener introduced to drive homeless people out of parks, disproportionately affected trans/queer folk, and emotions were already running high over a new anti-homeless proposition as well as police in Pride."

Davis said Leno was targeted because he supports Wiener in the state Senate race to succeed him.

"To be fair, Mark Leno, who was speaking as we disrupted, was not the worst offender in that group," Davis said. "However, he aligns with the moderates, and our boos and heckles drove all them off the stage and prevented Lee and Wiener from speaking."

She said future marches should "ban all pro-gentrification, pro-police, and anti-homeless politicians."

Douglas confirmed that the politicians had been invited to Friday's march.

"They always are," said Douglas, who self-identifies as a pre-op transgender woman.

Asked whether anyone had tried to intervene in what happened, she said, "I would like to end the conversation. I think you're putting words in my mouth. ... I don't like the way you're going" with the questions.

The march ended on a more celebratory note, as a portion of Taylor Street in the Tenderloin was renamed in honor of Compton's Cafeteria, a defunct restaurant that was a favorite gathering place for trans and queer people in the 1960s.

It was also the sight of a riot in August 1966, when trans and queer patrons of the eatery stood up to police, fed up at being repeatedly arrested on sex work charges and routinely harassed in general.

The street renaming, which is honorary, meaning businesses don't need to change their addresses, was introduced at the Board of Supervisors earlier this year by Supervisor Jane Kim, who represents the area and is running against Wiener for Leno's Senate seat.