A day of celebration full of rainbows, resistance
Huge parade marks 50th anniversary of Stonewall riots, with note of protest
Tens of thousands of people filled the streets for San Francisco LGBT Pride’s annual parade Sunday, including a glittery Kenya Knott, above. One of the largest Pride events in the world, the parade drew firsttimers, oldtimers, politicians and protesters. At right, protesters blocked the Market Street parade for almost an hour as they objected to the presence of police and corporations. Protesters pointed out that Pride commemorates Stonewall, the 1969 riots against police abuses of gay bar patrons. Two protesters were arrested.
Tens of thousands descended on downtown San Francisco on Sunday, adorned in rainbow flags, feather boas and beads to celebrate LGBT pride. There were firsttimers, oldtimers, politicians and protesters.
And there were people from out of town who had never seen a Pride Parade before. Larraine and Peter Browne, visiting from Australia, thought they could easily walk up Market Street to San Francisco’s famous attraction, the cable cars. But they ran into a different attraction.
“We didn’t know this was happening today,” Larraine, 69, said as she and Peter gazed at the rainbow spectacular before them.
“It’s going to be hilarious,” said Peter, 80. “Look at the costumes.”
Or lack of them. A naked man chose that moment to saunter by.
“He’s going to be colder than we are,” Peter mused.
Suddenly, a roar sounded so loud that it drowned out the conversations at a Market Street coffee bar. It wasn’t the Blue Angels fighter jets — it was the Dykes on Bikes kicking off the Gay Pride Parade, and the screams of parade spectators lined up along San Francisco’s main drag.
The parade started at 10:30 a.m. at Market and Beale streets with nearly 300 groups, about 50,000 marchers
and dozens of floats making their way along Market to Eighth Street. The celebration commemorated the city’s rich LGBT history and legacy of queer activism as well as the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City.
Against the thrum of “Let’s Get Loud,” by Jennifer Lopez — and vendors hawking “screwdrivers! margaritas!” — 17yearold Aideja Hair clung to a lamppost trying to get a better view of the passing parade, her first.
“I feel great. This is beautiful,” she said. “I love seeing people being themselves and being comfortable with it.”
Vendors kept paradegoers supplied with all sorts of rainbow merchandise: plastic chains, furry tails, suspenders, hats, flags and cannabisemblazoned flags.
Talisa Ariel, 29, had never worked a Pride Parade before. In fact, she said, she’d never even been a vendor before. But she couldn’t keep the flags, headbands and guitar straps on the shelf.
“Everything is selling itself,” she said. Maybe it was the joyful spirit of the day — or maybe Ariel was just a natural at selling things destined for next year’s garage sale.
Jarin Roy of South Fremont eyed a rainbow squid for sale, which turned out to be a hat.
“Just try it on,” Ariel told her. “I’m going to be really honest.”
Roy placed the squid on her head.
“Beautiful,” Ariel said, looking her customer in the eye. “It fits you really well!” Roy handed her $15, and Ariel hugged her, as she did every customer — and news reporter — who ventured near her stall.
The theme of this year’s parade was Decades of Resistance. But some paradegoers resisted the parade itself. Nina Larson, 30, held a sign saying “Corporate domination is not my fetish!” He explained: “Pride claims to be about resistance — but it’s increasingly become a corporate commercial.”
Larson and his friends singled out Google, an event sponsor, “because of its policy of platforming hate speech.”
Last month, YouTube and its parent company, Google, sparked controversy after declining to remove videos from a creator who made homophobic and racially insensitive comments. SF Pride officials raised concerns with the Google parade contingent, but the company remained a sponsor and participant in the parade.
Larson’s friend Miranda Kraus, 24, said she also was protesting the “overpolicing of Pride. It’s important to remember that Pride started as an antipolice riot,” she said, referring to Stonewall.
That antipolice sentiment flared up just after 11 a.m. near Market and Sixth streets. A group of protesters unfurled a banner across Market Street that called for police and corporations to be excluded from Pride. For 50 minutes, about a dozen people sat on the ground, arms linked, halting the parade.
Police tried to push the protesters off the street and a brief skirmish erupted. Two people were arrested.
At a rally at Civic Center Plaza, where Pride staff checked bags and requested donations of $1 to $5, bluewigged Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence emceed the event with drag queen Honey Mahogany, who stunned in a goldandblack body suit. Together they introduced Sen. Kamala Harris — “she knows how to get things
done, baby!”— resplendent in a glittering rainbowhued jacket.
The Oakland native appeared diminutive in contrast to the costumed drag queens who introduced her. Unlike at last week’s Democratic presidential debate, the former prosecutor dug her teeth into no foes. But in her fourminute speech about LGBTQ pride, Harris used that civil rights fight as a metaphor for her own fight to become the first female president of the United States.
“Think about all the strong, broad shoulders we stand upon when we celebrate the pride that we have,” she called to the crowd. This movement “in so many ways ... was about people who had the courage to fight for equality. People who had the strength to know that they may have been the only one in the room but they represented so many voices and so many people.”
The crowd cheered as Harris said she would fight to pass the Equality Act — a bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in May and, if signed into law, would expand federal antidiscrimination laws to include LGBTQ people. “No one will be made to fight alone in our America,” she said, before being pulled away by Sister Roma for a selfie.
Harris didn’t mention President Trump, but State Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, did. “Are we sending a message to Donald Trump?” he asked a cheering crowd. “That message is that love wins!”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed also pumped up the crowd, saying, “Yes, we have challenges in this country. Yes, LGBTQ rights are under attack. But ... we will not be erased . ... We’re gonna party, and we’re gonna have fun. And they’re gonna hear us all the way in Washington, D.C. We’re here, and we ain’t going nowhere.”
Thousands gathered at Pride celebrations elsewhere across the country, including Chicago, Seattle and New York, where 150,000 were expected to commemorate the Stonewall uprising.