DSA SF unequivocally condemns the police violence directed at our fellow San Franciscans in the LGBTQIA+ community this past Pride weekend. Thousands gathered for San Francisco’s Trans March to celebrate trans joy and stand in defense of trans lives amid escalating attacks on our communities locally and nationwide. The march was met with police violence as San Francisco Police Department officers rushed into the crowd, assaulted participants, and carried out arrests, turning a celebration of liberation into a stark reminder of ongoing state repression.
The police violence did not end there. Similar acts of intimidation and force were deployed at a queer SOMA block party on Saturday as well as outside of the Pride celebration at Civic Center on Sunday. The actions of the SFPD, including pointing so-called “non-lethal” weapons at attendees of peaceful gatherings, and repeatedly escalating situations through overwhelming shows of force, prove that they are more interested in intimidating our communities than protecting them.
It is important for us to forcefully affirm our unwavering solidarity with the movement for LGBTQIA+ liberation and the fight for trans rights as well as to stand against police brutality and all other forms of state repression.
The violence the SFPD unleashed over Pride Weekend was no miscalculation. Like all capitalist state violence, it served to defend property, preserve the existing social order, and intimidate radical working-class communities. The alleged justification for this escalation was property damage, yet the overwhelming display of armed force was directed at people peacefully celebrating Pride, exposing a system that repeatedly chooses repression over care. This is what years of rewarding police violence with expanding budgets, political cover, and unconditional institutional support produce: an emboldened force in tactical gear marching into our communities, shouting “whose streets?” while attempting to crush the radical spirit that Pride has embodied since its inception. We reaffirm our commitment to dismantling the capitalist system that has terrorized queer communities for generations, because true liberation cannot coexist with institutions built to suppress it.
San Francisco’s queer and trans liberation movement was forged in resistance to police violence. Nearly sixty years ago, trans women, drag queens, and other members of San Francisco’s LGBTQIA+ community fought back against police harassment during the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in the Tenderloin, an uprising that helped lay the foundation for the modern movement for transgender liberation. Today, the building that once housed Compton’s is owned by the GEO Group and operates as a private detention facility, a reminder that systems of state repression do not disappear on their own.
State repression will never extinguish our commitment to justice, collective liberation, and the rights of marginalized communities to organize, march, and exist free from violence. Pride was born from political resistance against state violence, and we stand firmly in solidarity with that tradition. Our liberation has always been won through collective struggle, not granted from above.
We invite everyone outraged by the violence of this weekend to organize with us, not only to respond to this moment, but to build the political movement that will ensure it does not happen again.
Share this: