Latest news with #TransgenderDistrict
San Francisco Chronicle
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco's Transgender District launches $100K Riot Fund amid federal cuts
Amid widespread financial cuts to LGBTQ organizations under the Trump administration, San Francisco's transgender community is fighting back. To help address urgent budget shortfalls, the Transgender District is launching the Riot Fund, a three-year emergency campaign to raise $100,000. The effort seeks to restore services to community members amid a trend of rescinded grants and institutional divestment from the transgender community since the election. 'This administration doesn't want to fund anything having to do with LGBT communities, especially the T,' said Carlo Gomez Arteaga, the District's co-executive director. 'They don't want to have any funding go towards diversity and equity initiatives or anything that favors a particular minority, even if lifting up the most marginalized lifts everyone up.' The launch comes during August's Transgender History Month and ahead of the District's annual Riot Party on Saturday, Aug. 23. The event commemorates the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria Riots, when transgender patrons fought back during a police raid at the Tenderloin establishment. Although the event remains free, attendees will be strongly encouraged to donate to the fund. This year's party is co-produced by the District and the all-Black Bay Area drag show ' Reparations.' Performers on the bill include 'Reparations' founder and Drag Queen of the Year Nicki Jizz, Jax, Militia Scunt, Afrika America, Redbone and Bettyie Jayne, with a DJ set by Star Amerasu. 'RuPaul's Drag Race' Season 8 contestant Naomi Smalls will also be among the featured talent. The celebration comes against a backdrop of new federal restrictions that threaten to deepen the funding crisis. Gomez Arteaga cited the recent executive order titled 'Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking' that changed how federal agencies award and manage grants to nonprofits. The order also added increased oversight by political appointees, a shift Gomez Arteaga fears could affect funding that 'trickles down' from the federal government to states and cities. 'Historically, 90% of our budget was from the city and county of San Francisco through the Office of Workforce Development, the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, and through the Human Rights Commission's (canceled) Dream Keepers Initiative,' explained Co-Executive Director Breonna McCree. 'A lot of these departments have had severe budget cuts, which also have led to grants being rescinded and us not being able to support our community without the vital funds that we need to keep doing this work,' she added. Both leaders described the Riot Fund as an attempt to protect what has already been built. The District's Entrepreneurship Accelerator is among the programs on hold due to funding shortfalls, along with the Social Justice Fellowship and Community Advisory Council. Wellness and safety programs, including the Name and Gender Marker Change Clinics, are also currently under threat. The Transgender District, which encompasses six blocks of Southeast Tenderloin and two blocks South of Market Street, was founded in 2017 as one of the city's 10 officially recognized cultural districts. It remains the world's first and only legally recognized Transgender District, marked by blue, white and pink transgender pride flags painted on utility poles. 'At a time when trans-serving organizations are under attack and public funds have been slashed, the city of San Francisco cut critical support to the Transgender District, forcing the organization to urgently replace that funding through private donors,' Alex Sloan, chairman and president of the Excelerate Foundation, said in a statement. 'We have supported the District for years because of their vital work with trans and nonbinary people, and I call on funders to invest in and protect the District and other trans-led organizations fighting to survive in today's hostile political climate.'
CBS News
12-08-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Author, activist traces over a century of transgender history in San Francisco's Tenderloin
In the heart of San Francisco, Reverend Dr. Megan Rohrer has unearthed a lineage of transgender history that has long thrived in the city. Within that history, Rohrer found a community that felt like home. "Finding people in old-timey photos made me feel a little bit more seen in presence today, like I wasn't inventing a new thing for myself," Rohrer said. Today, he walks among the world's first legally recognized Transgender District, which spans parts of Market Street and the Tenderloin. "On these corners is a place where the 1906 earthquake destroyed a lot of stuff, including that vaudeville theater. It paved the way for trans people to kind of move into some of that housing and to SROs in the area," he said. The history embedded in these blocks stretches back centuries. "There is an old, very exciting history of trans community and joy that spans all the way back to the 1800s," he added. Rohrer is bringing that history to light in a new book, aiming to make trans history accessible and to offer a storied family tree to today's trans community. "My goal is that these photos will be so much more accessible to anyone who's looking for them, either at a public library where they check it out, or at a local store where they can get their own, but they have to travel the country to different archives to find these really historic photos," he said. But this history doesn't only live in Rohrer's book - it comes to life through the voices of trans elders, such as Miss Billie Cooper, a veteran who lived through San Francisco's underground trans scene and never stopped being unapologetically herself. "I found about men from all over the world. I had a smorgasbord ... there I had back then I had a beard, okay, but I would get from everybody, and I can wear my own five-inch heels," Cooper said. For many, these aren't just stories. They serve as a guiding light in a time when trans rights are under fire. The lessons mark a blueprint for hope and resistance. "There's not a day I leave my house where I don't wonder where I can go to the bathroom, if I can go to the bathroom, and if I will be safe in those spaces," Rohrer said. "So sharing stories amongst other trans people has been the way to try to stay as safe as possible since the before times," Rohrer said. Rohrer hopes the stories and lessons preserved in the book and reflected in the streets of the Transgender District will ensure the next generation won't have to search so far to find themselves. Megan's book, San Francisco's Transgender District, is now available in bookstores and online.
