Latest news with #TransgenderHistoryMonth
San Francisco Chronicle
a day 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 The effort seeks to restore services to community members amid a trend of rescinded grants and institutional divestment from the transgender community since the election.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.'
Axios
07-08-2025
- Health
- Axios
How SF became the heart of the trans rights movement
San Francisco kicked off Transgender History Month this week with a flag-raising ceremony that emphasized the urgency of protecting trans rights while serving as a reminder that the city has played a crucial role in advancing the movement. The big picture: SF is believed to be the first U.S. city to officially observe the commemorative month. It began doing so in 2021 after activist Jupiter Peraza led an effort to celebrate the city's rich history of trans pioneers. Between the lines: While trans people in the U.S. continue to face disproportionately high rates of violence, suicidal ideation and homelessness, advocates say these realities do not define the community. Catch up quick: August was designated Transgender History Month to honor the legacy of the Compton's Cafeteria Riot in August 1966, when a trans woman resisted police harassment by throwing a cup of coffee at an officer at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in the Tenderloin. The move sparked a revolt, marking "the first known instance of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment" in the country — years before the Stonewall Riots, historian Susan Stryker said in a 2015 episode of the "Code Switch" podcast. Flashback: SF has also been the heart of several other pivotal moments in American trans history: In 1965, the San Francisco Department of Public Health established the Center for Special Problems. Led by doctor Joel Fort and trans activist Wendy Kohler, the center provided mental health counseling and hormone prescriptions. It also issued ID cards, signed by a public health doctor, that matched trans people's gender instead of their sex assigned at birth, allowing them to open bank accounts and seek employment in alignment with their identity, per Stryker's book"Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution." Trans activists Jamison Green and Kiki Whitlock, among others, worked with San Francisco's Human Rights Commission to publish a landmark report in 1994 documenting human rights abuses against the trans community. The investigation found that trans people faced significant barriers to obtaining medical and social services, securing stable employment and accessing rape crisis resources and homeless shelters. The document served as the basis for a 1995 city ordinance banning discrimination against trans people. Theresa Sparks made history in 2007 when she was elected president of the San Francisco Police Commission, becoming the first openly trans city department head as well as the highest-ranking trans official. In 2017, three Black trans women — Honey Mahogany, Janetta Johnson and Aria Sa'id — founded Compton's Transgender Cultural District, now known as The Transgender District, the first of its kind in the world, KQED reports.
