S.F. Pride Parade off again; other events scheduled
Tell the Dykes on Bikes to stop their engines. In spite of progress made reopening in the Bay Area in 2021, the San Francisco Pride Parade will not be returning to Market Street on the last Sunday of June this year, nor will the traditional opening motorcycle procession.
Instead, the annual celebrations for LGBTQ Pride Weekend will be expanded into a month of programming with three socially distant, outdoor events anchoring the schedule, organizers announced Wednesday, March 24. In addition to being envisioned with pandemic safety measures in mind, the new format also gives the organization the opportunity to focus on renewed discussions around equity in the LGBTQ community.
“Pride every year is going to take into account
the zeitgeist of the current moment, not only in LGBTQ communities but in the larger community,” said Fred Lopez, executive director of San Francisco Pride. “We learned a lot in 2020 about putting on a virtual event. We’ve been doing some internal investigation into unconscious bias in our community, listening to BIPOC people and making sure that learning is at the forefront in 2021.”
S.F. Pride moved its events online last year in response to the coronavirus pandemic for what was supposed to be the celebration’s blowout 50th anniversary.
This year, a Pride expo will replace the traditional Pride Sunday party at the Civic Center. Also joining the schedule will be a film night at Oracle Park (partnered with Frameline, the longestrunning LGBTQ film festival, and the San Francisco Giants) and a Black liberation event in collaboration with the African American Art & Culture Complex on Fulton Street.
The Pride Expo and movie night dates have not yet been set, and the featured films will be announced in coming weeks. The Black liberation event is tentatively scheduled for June 18 (the night before Juneteenth). It plans to celebrate the intersections of Black history and LGBTQ culture, and aims to build on last year’s Marsha P. Johnson Solidarity Rally, which was also held at the complex.
The theme is “All in This Together,” part of a strategy to focus more on the Bay Area queer community, a noticeable move away from the event’s branding in past years that some believed targeted tourists more than locals. The Pride Expo will focus on presenting queer businesses and organizations that provide resources within the Bay Area LGBTQ community.
The changes come at a moment of reevaluation for the organization: Many civic and cultural celebrations are transitioning back to inperson events, while S.F. Pride is facing calls from parts of the LGBTQ community to reassess its mission in light of the nationwide dialogue around systemic injustice and bias.
“I think we can always do better,” said Lopez. “This is a year to try something new and make sure voices of BIPOC people are centered.”
Complaints that the celebrations were too corporate and had moved away from Pride’s political and community roots came to a head in 2020 after conversations about race and policing were renewed by Black Lives Matter and the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Lopez said that S.F. Pride is currently reevaluating the event’s relationship with law enforcement and discussing with the San Francisco Police Department “how their involvement can be positive moving into 2022.”
In 2020, activists Juanita More and Alex U. Inn hosted a wellattended counterevent, the “People’s March & Rally — Unite to Fight!” whose mission was to center the voices of people of color and protest both police and corporate presence at S.F. Pride. Lopez said part of the move to the monthlong format is to allow for more diverse voices in the community to be recognized.
S.F. Pride also launched the S.F. Pride 365 initiative earlier this year. The online event series is part of what the organization calls its “ongoing efforts to broaden the reach of the Pride movement and keep LGBTQ+ people connected during the rest of the calendar year.” Events include video conversations like “Inside Pride,” “Community Partner Spotlight” and the podcast “The Queerness.”