HIV survivors proudly join march
While the DJ on the Salesforce float thumped music and blasted bubbles, and Amazon’s employees, dressed in shirts that said “Glamazon,” danced beneath a rainbow-colored mockup of an Alexa smart speaker, a much quieter trolley waited for its turn to enter the parade.
Amid all the noise sat 59-year-old Norman Tanner, calmly holding a sign that said, “I am proud to be me,” scribbled with a blue Sharpie.
Tanner was among the hundreds of thousands of people, proud to be themselves, who poured onto Market Street on Sunday for the Pride Parade. In sharp contrast to the partying, politics and countless tech companies that used the parade as a way to gather positive attention, the quiet San Francisco AIDS Foundation trolley carried people like Tanner: a gentle man who was given six months to live in 1990 after being diagnosed with HIV.
For him and others in the trolley, the parade was a way to celebrate their personal stories of struggle and pride. Tanner has been attending Pride festivities for about 20 years since he founded Black Brothers Esteem, a support group for black men with HIV, something he said didn’t exist before for people like him.
When asked what this year means to him, he rattled off his list of words: “Unity. Love. Pride. Togetherness.”
On the other side of the trolley sat Billie Cooper, a vivacious transgender woman, who has been coming to Pride for 30 years. Cooper loves any reason to celebrate her sexuality and survival of HIV — but she is frustrated with some of the parade’s changes.
When Pride began 47 years ago, it was a protest for gay rights so people like her could enjoy the same rights as everyone else. When Cooper realized she was a girl at 10 years old in the 1970s, there wasn’t even a word for what she was feeling.
“We were called sissies, homosexuals, freaks,” the 58-year-old San Francisco resident said. At the time, LGBT was only “G,” she added.
Today, Cooper has much to celebrate. She not only has a new word but a foundation she created — called TransLife — to embrace who she is and help others embrace who they are through health services and support groups.
While she appreciates how much more accepting society is of transgender people and how the parade has evolved into more of a celebration, she questions the motivations of some of its corporate sponsors.
“There’s more people with an agenda, everyone has their logos,” she said, pointing to a rainbow flag on a nearby bank. “Why don’t they have that up all year? Why just wait until June?”
But when it was finally the AIDS Foundation’s turn to make the left onto Market Street and join the parade — where even more corporate logos lined the way — there Cooper was with her pink feather boa and her fellow survivors, engulfed by cheers as they joined the sea of rainbows.