A group of about 12 protestors brought the San Francisco 2019 Pride Parade to a halt on Sunday (30 June). They were drawing attention to the police’s participation in the parade, which they found objectionable because of the treatment by police to members of the LGBTQ Community both in the city and around the world. They also object to the many corporations that participate, that negatively impact the community.
About an hour after the parade began, protestors blocked Market Street by chaining themselves together under rainbow tubes, according to SF Gate.
Other pride attendees also pushed and shoved police officers, CBS reports.
Police arrested at least two people. But, authorities cleared the protest by noon and the march continued. Event organizers worked with the protesters and police to pacify both groups and promised to take the protesters demands under consideration.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance that prohibits the sale of e-cigarettes within the city. If signed into law, the new legislation would amend the city’s health code, making it illegal for stores to sell vaping products or for online retailers to ship them to San Francisco addresses, which means it would become the first city to enact such a ban.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera [photo], who co-sponsored the ban on sales, told Bloomberg that products will be allowed to be sold in the city again if they receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA oversees e-cigarettes, but will not require vape companies to submit for approval until 2022. The ordinance is now waiting to be signed by Mayor London Breed, who has 10 days to review the legislation. If she signs it, the ban goes into place in seven months.
In a statement Tuesday following the vote, Juul spokesman Ted Kwong said, “this full prohibition will drive former adult smokers who successfully switched to vapor products back to deadly cigarettes, deny the opportunity to switch for current adult smokers, and create a thriving black market instead of addressing the actual causes of underage access and use.”
The policy also sets the stage for what could be a longer clash over e-cig regulation. Juul is also behind a ballot initiative that experts worry could roll back the city ordinance if voters approve it in upcoming elections.
Smaller, locally-focused marches prefacing Sunday’s main march have turned into must-attend events, especially for locals who want to eschew the gawking, the fighting, and the alcohol-infused Bay to Breakers-like vibefound at Sunday’s impenetrable Civic Center party. The Dyke March and the Trans March—which happen the Saturday and Friday of Pride weekend, respectively—have, for many, turned into the real San Francisco Pride marches.
In addition to events and marches galore, there will also be many Muni disruptions, street closures, and more. The theme for 2019 is Generations of Resistance, a tip of the hat to the Stonewall riots, which turned 50 this year, and the 1966 Compton Cafeteria riots.
Here’s what you need to know about SF Pride weekend:
When: Saturday, June 29—rally begins at 11 a.m. and march starts at 5 p.m. (get there early!)
Where: Rally happens in Dolores Park. The march starts from Dolores Street along 18th Street to Valencia Street to 16th Street and up into the Castro to 18th and back to Dolores Park.
When: Rally starts at 3 p.m., march starts at 5 p.m.
Where: Dolores Park. The march route will go up Dolores Street from the park, make a right on Market, left on Viki Mar Lane (also known as Taylor Street), and over to Eddy Street. The marchers will fill in Eddy Street to hear speakers and to party.
Traffic reroutes and street closures
We will update this article as soon as information about Muni, BART, and street closures is officially released. But do know that driving anywhere in the city during Pride weekend will be a congested mess. If and when possible, use public transit.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center has been awarded a $25,000 Arts Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) benefiting art education programs tailored to LGBT seniors. Over the course of 18 months, Reflections of a Lifetime courses will provide seniors with opportunities and tools to share their personal life stories through the arts. The initiative is projected to attract more than 75 participants through the Center’s Senior Services. Most of the activities will occur at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Senior Center located within the new, intergenerational Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood. This is the second consecutive year the NEA has awarded an Arts Works grant to the Center.
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“Our LGBT older adults deserve opportunities to express themselves through creativity and to share stories about their life experiences with the younger generations. These art education projects will depict the power of community and intergenerationality—one of the tenets for building our new Anita May Rosenstein Campus,” said the Center’s Director of Senior Services Kiera Pollock. “Thanks to this prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, all generations served by the Center can continue to thrive and be inspired.”
Reflections of a Lifetime will include the following courses:
Still We Rise A women’s writing workshop for poetry and prose taught by Dorothy Randall Gray, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs’ awarded Poet-in-Residence.
Stand-Up Comedy Taught by Los Angeles-based comedian Caitlyn Durante, the beginning level workshop series guides participants through the process of creating their own short set.
Sculptural Storytelling Sequential classes taught by studio-artist Molly Allis will inspire seniors to transform their stories into sculptures constructed from found objects.
Spirit of Survival Artist Nick Paul and cancer survivor Anne Stockwell teaches the ancient art of mask-making to help heal seniors who have been affected by cancer, HIV, or other health challenges.
Rise Up Together Self-Help Graphics, a storied arts nonprofit based in East Los Angeles, will offer workshops in silk screening and mural making at three community sites.
The $25,000 grant is part of the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2019 in which NEA Acting Chairman Mary Anne Carter has approved more than $80 million in grants.
“These awards, reaching every corner of the United States, are a testament to the artistic richness and diversity in our country,” said Carter. “Organizations such as the Los Angeles LGBT Center are giving people in their community the opportunity to learn, create, and be inspired.”
For more information about the Los Angeles LGBT Center, visit lalgbtcenter.org.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom had the rainbow pride flag raised at the state Capitol on Monday for the first time in state history, sending a message of resistance against the Trump administration’s policy forbidding the LGBTQ banner at other government buildings.
The Democratic governor tweeted out the news with a photo showing the pride flag flying beneath the American flag midway through LGBTQ Pride Month. It will stay up until July 1. REAL LIFE. REAL NEWS. REAL VOICES.Help us tell more of the stories that matter from voices that too often remain unheard.Support HuffPost
“In California, we celebrate and support our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community’s right to live out loud – during Pride month and every month,” Newsom said in a statement. “By flying the pride flag over the State Capitol, we send a clear message that California is welcoming and inclusive to all, regardless of how you identify or who you love.” View image on Twitter
Though Pence’s reasoning was that only “one flag should fly” on those State Department buildings, he’s long been one of the most vocal opponents to LGBTQ equality efforts, supporting so-called gay conversion therapy, fighting to stop marriage equality and defending people seeking to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
Amid the controversy, political leaders in Wisconsin and New York also decided to raise pride flags at their state capitols for the first time.
In defiance of the Trump administration policy, some U.S. embassies and diplomats have flown the pride flag anyway or found other ways to honor Pride Month, such as by shining rainbow lights on the exterior of embassies.
Exhibition OpeningChosen Familias: Bay Area LGBTQ Latinx Stories
Friday, June 77:00–9:00 p.m.The GLBT Historical Society Museum4127 18th St., San Francisco$5.00 | Free for members A new exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society Museum brings together photos, ephemera and text to center biological and chosen Latinx LGBTQ families as sources of hope and resilience. By queering the traditional family photo album, the show reframes historical documentation of mothers, daughters, fathers, children, siblings, aunts and uncles. “Chosen Familias” also features video interviews and footage of Bay Area LGBTQ Latinx activists and artists of the past four decades. Curated by Tina Valentin Aguirre, chair of the society’s board of directors, the exhibition expands the definition of LGBTQ family to encompass not just biological relatives, but also mentors, coalition members and the networks of people that have supported Latinx LGBTA people in the Bay Area. Light refreshments will be served. Tickets are available online here.
Walking TourOUT of Site: SoMa — Produced by Eye Zen Presents
Saturday, June 8: 12:00–2:00, 3:00–5:00 p.m.Sunday, June 9: 1:00–3:00 p.m.Saturday, June 15: 12:00–2:00, 3:00–5:00 p.m.Sunday, June 16: 1:00–3:00 p.m.Howard Langton Community Garden10 Langton St., San Francisco$25 | $10 for studentsFrom the original Native American inhabitants, to the tent villages of gold miners, to the SROs housing factory workers, to the formation of an LGBTQ and leather community in the 1960s, to its current tech-fueled redevelopment, San Francisco’s SoMa District has been ever-changing. “OUT of Site: SoMa” is an immersive walking tour cosponsored by the GLBT Historical Society that offers a panoramic view of the transformation of this neighborhood. The walk lasts approximately two hours and covers about one mile. The tours are a project of Eye Zen Presents, a San Francisco-based theater company committed to honoring the stories of queer ancestors, histories and sites through performances and community-building events. More information is available here. Tickets are available online here.
Book LaunchRainbow Warrior: The Memoirs of Gilbert Baker
Tuesday, June 115:30–7:30 p.m.San Francisco Main LibraryKoret Auditorium100 Larkin St., San FranciscoFree San Francisco artist and activist Gilbert Baker (1951–2017) created the globally adopted rainbow flag as a symbol of the LGBTQ community in 1978. Baker’s life and work will be explored, illuminated and celebrated in this unique event organized for the posthumous release of his memoirs, Rainbow Warrior: My Life in Color (Chicago Review Press, 2019). Cosponsored by the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, the program will feature a short film about Baker’s life, selected readings from the memoirs and a discussion with social justice activists. The evening will begin with a reception and end with a book signing. More information is available here.
Panel DiscussionPreserving San Francisco’s Queer Historic Places
Thursday, June 136:00–7:30 p.m.San Francisco Main LibraryKoret Auditorium100 Larkin St., San FranciscoFree San Francisco’s queer culture is deeply intertwined in urban life, and it has not been immune to the changes in our city. Carving space in the urban landscape has been essential for queer survival, for building community and obtaining political and cultural power, and, quite simply, for finding each other. Some of those essential queer heritage institutions, sites and even whole neighborhoods now are being erased by hypergentrification. A panel including academics and community leaders will join GLBT Historical Society Executive Director Terry Beswick and senior public history advisor Gerard Koskovich to reflect on the status of San Francisco’s queer historic places and living cultural heritage and to consider what may lie ahead for them. The program is cosponsored by the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, More information is available here.
Living History DiscussionThrill Spot: The Raid on Tommy’s Place
Thursday, June 137:00–9:00 p.m.The GLBT Historical Society Museum4127 18th St., San Francisco$5.00 | Free for members The 1954 police raid on Tommy’s Place, a lesbian bar in San Francisco’s North Beach, is the stuff of legend. Lurid headlines describing the seduction of teenage girls in a “vice academy” were followed by sensational stories teeming with swaggering butches, police graft and political intrigue. Lambda Award–winning author and visual artist Katie Gilmartin shares her research about this event, as well as excerpts from the draft of the fictional account inspired by the raid that she is currently writing. She’ll also offer reflections on how archives and oral histories serve as the basis for historical fiction imagining the lives of LGBTQ ancestors. The program is offered in collaboration with Openhouse and is made possibly by grants from the Queer Cultural Center and the Creative Work Fund. Tickets are available online here.
Film ScreeningStarman: Freddie Burretti, the Man Who Sewed the World
Monday, June 177:00 p.m.The Roxie Theater3117 16th St., San Francisco$13 Join us at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater for a special benefit screening of Lee Scriven’s 2018 documentary Starman, which details the fascinating story of Freddie Burretti, a close friend of David Bowie and his key Ziggy Stardust costume collaborator and stylist. By creating a sensational and inspiring onstage and offstage wardrobe, Burretti helped Bowie challenge British culture, fashion, homophobia and a skeptical rock music industry. All proceeds from the screening go the GLBT Historical Society. Tickets are available here.
Book LaunchThe Routledge History of Queer America
Tuesday, June 187:00–9:00 p.m.The GLBT Historical Society Museum4127 18th St., San Francisco$5.00 | Free for members The Routledge History of Queer America (2018), the first comprehensive overview of the field of United States LGBTQ history, is a landmark work. Edited by Don Romesburg, professor of women and gender studies at Sonoma State University and former cochair of the GLBT Historical Society Board of Directors, the anthology features more than 20 authors and nearly 30 chapters on essential themes in queer history from colonial times to the present. In this roundtable organized in celebration of the release of the new paperback edition, Romesburg will be joined by a panel of historians who will evaluate the state of the field of queer American history. Tickets are available here.
Performance¡Aplauso! Live Storytelling & Performances
Friday, June 217:00–9:00 p.m.The GLBT Historical Society Museum4127 18th St., San Francisco$5.00 | Free for members An impressive group of Latinx queer artists and performance artists will stage dances, enact theater scenes, read poetry and show short films celebrating the culture and diversity of the queer Latinx community. Performers include transgender artist Donna Personna; artist, oral historian and activist Mason J.; drag queen Foxxy Blue Orchid; performance artist Xandra Ibarra; Chicana writer Natalia M. Vigil; activist, filmmaker and dancer Dulce; and writer and historian Juliana Delgado Lopera. This event is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Chosen Familias: Bay Area LGBTQ Latinx Histories,” opening at the GLBT Historical Society Museum on June 7. Tickets are available online here.
Living History DiscussionLGBTQ Art, Film, Poetry & Dance in San FranciscoSaturday, June 222:00–3:30 p.m.De Young MuseumPiazzoni Murals Room50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., San FranciscoFree for San Francisco residentsOrganized by the GLBT Historical Society in collaboration with San Francisco’s De Young Museum, a group of artists and culture makers will engage in an intergenerational discussion on LGBTQ people in the arts in San Francisco from the 1960s to the present.
For the second year in a row, uniformed police officers will not be able to participate in Sacramento, California, Pride at the request of organizers.
The Sacremento LGBT Community Center asked city officers to participate in the parade without wearing their standard uniform.
The group argue that their presence while uniformed would make others feel uncomfortable.
What happened?
The center organizes Sacremento Pride as an annual festival. This year, it’s scheduled for 8-9 June.
But in a statement on their Facebook page posted 1 June, the center asked that police officers who wish to attend during pride do not wear their uniforms.
‘To honor the pain and marginalization of community members who have been harmed by police violence,’ the statement read, ‘we have asked Sacramento Police not to participate in uniform for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.’
The post then clarified that officers will be on duty during the parade march. Which begins on the corner of 8th and T street, just off Southside Park.
Moreover, the post then added that there will be ‘private security and identifiable community safety monitors’ throughout the march.
Officers react: ‘Disappointed’
In a statement sent to local newspaper, The Sacramento Bee, the police department said it was disappointed that the center ‘does not want our officers attending upcoming public community events while in uniform.’
‘We support our LGBTQ officers who proudly serve our community on a daily basis,’ it added.
‘Sad that inclusion doesn’t really mean everybody,’ Captain Norm Leong of the Sacramento Police Department wrote in a Facebook post.
‘Worse part is to hear how much this hurt our LGBTQI officers who looked forward to participating.’
‘A step in the journey toward better inclusion’
Moreover, the center went onto add an amendment to their original post on 2 June. The group clarified they collaborated with authorities on the decision.
‘They didn’t participate last year at all, welcoming them to participate as members of the community, out of uniform, this year was a compromise.
‘Rejection of the compromise fails to acknowledge the pain and historical abuses police institutions have inflicted on the most marginalized in our community.
‘This is not the end. This is a step in the journey toward better inclusion, affirmation and safety for all LGBTQ+ people here and beyond.’
When the first Los Angeles Pride parade hit the streets of Hollywood in 1970, the world was experiencing a crisis of contradictions. When it came to gay identity, things were changing. The Stonewall Riots of the year before gave way to protests all across the country, led by people who were sick of being treated like second-class citizens. The Black Cat demonstration in L.A. in 1967, along with the Cooper Donut riot of 1959, laid the groundwork for a new generation of activist gays who weren’t content to be shoved around, targeted and violently harassed by the police. – Advertisement –
Christopher Street West was formed, in part, as a response to the need for action and visibility. At a time when gay sex was still illegal in most parts of the country and the AIDS epidemic was still a decade away, America was trying to figure out how gayness, and openly gay identities, fit into its identity as a free speech-loving, yet vocally conservative, country. So the parade happened in Los Angeles, and then in New York. But these celebrations, as the surviving images show, were full of queens, leather daddies, go-go boys and folks generally unconcerned with respectability politics. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Pride parade was never televised. It couldn’t have been treated with the same level of interest, the same pomp and glamour and bizarre gaudiness as a Macy’s day parade.
Today is another era, of course, and while the people currently running our country may wish to harken back to a simpler, straighter, whiter time that never, in fact, existed in America, the people who live here are ready for this yearly celebration of gayness to be broadcast out to the world. Or at least, to greater Los Angeles.
In a historic deal with Southern California news station KABC, Christopher Street West has signed onto a three-year contract to televise the L.A. Pride festival, as well as the famous West Hollywood parade.
The live coverage of the parade will be co-hosted by the beloved (yet controversial) Raven-Symone, along with KABC regulars Ellen Leyva and Brandi Hitt for a special two-hour broadcast on June 9.
A protestor fights against the controversial Briggs Initiative, a measure that would have made it illegal for LGBTQ+ teachers to work in schools, in 1978.
“I am honored to be a part of this year’s Pride celebration,” Community Grand Marshall Phill Wilson said to CSW. “The LGBTQI community has come a long way in the last 50 years. It has not been without heartache, pain, sacrifice, and growth. I am humbled to be among such a powerful and diverse group of grand marshals. Together we represent how much stronger we are when we celebrate all of what we are.”
The Los Angeles LGBT Center, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with the opening of a new Senior Campus, will take the role of Organizational Grand Marshal.
“We are humbled and honored to have Phill Wilson and the Los Angeles LGBT Center serve as the Grand Marshals for LA Pride 2019.” said Estevan Montemayor, CSW Board President, in a press release. “Together, these people and the organizations they represent have made an indelible and important mark on the LGBTQ+ community that has improved and enriched the lives of many individuals who have faced so much adversity. Our grand marshals inspire us, empower us and are examples of how to unite our community. We are so excited that KABC is here to increase the awareness of our grand marshals and LA Pride.”
There’s no denying that the queer community has come a long way since the early days of the parade, when you could still get booked for a blow job. With queer and trans rights currently under attack by the Trump administration, the show of support, optimism and pride might be just what the community needs to see on small screens everywhere.
“We’re proud to bring the L.A. Pride Parade celebration to viewers across Southern California,” Cheryl Fair, president and general manager of KABC, told Deadline. “Our collaboration with LA Pride is a commitment to reflecting and serving the diverse communities that represent our audience.”
Ten years ago, Rafeal “Nephew” Bankston landed in solitary confinement in San Quentin State Prison for refusing a gay cellmate.
“Where I grew up, we called it gay bashing,” he said. “We hated them, robbed them,” Bankston added matter-of-factly.
On a Wednesday afternoon in April, he told that story to a classroom of 15 other inmates. About half of them were LGBTQ. Photos of LGBTQ icons — Janet Mock, Ellen Degeneres, James Baldwin — smiled down from a whiteboard at the front of the room.
Rafeal “Nephew” Bankston is an inmate at San Quentin State Prison. Kate Sosin
No one said a word. Lisa Strawn, 60, a transgender woman, was sitting next to Bankston and didn’t move.
Bankston, 37, was smaller than most of the others in the room. He wore plastic-frame glasses and a blue prison shirt that looked several sizes too big. Like many in the room, he has spent more than half of his life behind bars. He entered prison at 18 and said he learned at a young age to hate gay and trans people.
Half a life later, he wants to talk about Jussie Smollett. He wants to know how his LGBTQ peers feel about Smollett now that the TV star’s reported anti-gay hate crime has been refuted by Chicago Police.
“When we walked out of here, here, everybody was pulling for him because it was wrong, how he got treated,” Bankston said. “Do you all still feel that way?”
He posed the question to members of Acting With Compassion & Truth, or ACT, a restorative justice group that meets weekly at San Quentin. Restorative justice is an alternative to punishment, one in which offenders and victims try to heal together.
‘I didn’t know where I fit in’
Each week for a year, LGBTQ and straight inmates meet for two hours in a small yellow classroom. They talk about everything from what it means that Janelle Monáe came out as pansexual to how to respect intersex people. Their goal is simple: heal together and work toward a better world for LGBTQ people.
Inmates Michael Adams and Juan Meza currently lead the group. The lessons have been designed by LGBTQ prisoners.
The group is as diverse as the world on the outside. Ages range from 25 years to late middle age, and races and ethnicities vary. Almost all of the attendees are what are referred to as “lifers,” those convicted of felonies so serious that their sentences range from many years to life in prison. These include murder and sex crimes.
Three of the group’s attendees are transgender women. Lisa Strawn is among them.
Lisa Strawn is a transgender inmate at San Quentin State Prison.Kate Sosin
Strawn, who prefers no pronouns, entered prison 25 years ago on three-strikes burglary charges and has served much of that time at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, another men’s prison. Strawn transitioned to female at age 18 but has always been housed with men.
That’s because in most prisons across the nation, transgender inmates are housed according to their birth sex, despite federal requirements in the Prison Rape Elimination Act that inmates be housed on a case-by-case basis.
Strawn has grown accustomed to navigating men’s prisons as a woman.
San Quentin is California’s oldest prison, built in 1851 by prisoners at the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Marin County. The views from the entrance are so heavenly it is often remarked that it’s astonishing the prison has not been flattened and divided up for real estate.
San Quentin State Prison overlooks the San Francisco Bay.Kate Sosin
The 600-man cell block looms at six levels. There is no air-conditioning in the unit, and fans run in the background. Cells are just wide enough to stand in sideways. They house two people each and the sum of their possessions, crammed into cubbies above bunks. At one end of the cell block, men make calls from a line of pay phones. At the other end, they shower out in the open.
With a blond ponytail and carefully-applied eyeliner, Strawn decidedly stands out at San Quentin.
“Honestly, I’ve had problems, but then I guess myself personally, I think a lot of it is how you carry yourself,” Strawn said. “Every time I walk into a room I better own it.”
San Quentin State PrisonKate Sosin
At Vacaville, Strawn helped establish an LGBTQ group. Leaving that a year ago to come to San Quentin was devastating.
“I hated this place when I got here,” Strawn said. “I didn’t know where I fit in, and I knew where I fit in there. But when I came here, I got into ACT.” Aside from the restorative justice group, Strawn also got into journalism by writing for the San Quentin news outlet, The Beat Within.
Transgender women like Strawn report exceedingly high rates of violence behind bars, according to data from the National Center for Transgender Equality. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that transgender people were nine times more likely than the general prison population to be sexually assaulted by other inmates.
Trans Inmate Holly Stuckey participates in San Quentin’s restorative justice group.Kate Sosin
It was due to that hostility that trans women approached the Insight Prison Project in 2015, where Billie Mizell was then serving as executive director. Inmates asked Mizell to support the formation of an LGBTQ education program at San Quentin. They didn’t want a support group.
“What I kept hearing from them was, ‘We live our lives here every day surrounded by thousands of people who have been for the last 20 or 30 years who haven’t had exposure to the evolution that we know is happening out there,’” Mizell explained, noting that the transgender inmates wanted to “bring that inside” the prison’s walls.
Working with several inmates, Mizell brought a yearlong curriculum to the prison. She has been leading the Acting With Compassion & Truth group as a volunteer at San Quentin ever since.
Billie Mizell leads San Quentin State Prison’s Acting With Compassion and Truth group, a restorative justice program. Kate Sosin
This year, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation allowed her to replicate the program on San Quentin’s death row, which remains intact despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent decision to halt executions. That group, comprised of five people, meets Tuesdays. It is not open to reporters.
ACT is entirely voluntary, although many admittedly come to the Wednesday class because it looks good for the parole board. Mizell, however, won’t let anyone in who is not genuinely committed to the lessons.
Still, the resulting class presents a strange juxtaposition. Prisoners, some convicted of extreme anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, spend a year in close proximity with the prison’s most vulnerable LGBTQ population.
‘I was so ashamed’
Among the group’s founding members is Phil Melendez, who faced 30 years to life in prison for two counts of second-degree murder, partially motivated by animus against a lesbian.
In 1997, Melendez’s father was stabbed while collecting a drug debt. Melendez justified avenging the assault because one of the assailants was a lesbian. On a phone call with NBC News, Melendez, who has since been released from prison, rattles off the slurs he used as he burst into a house and killed two people.
In prison, Melendez said he had a lot of time to think, not just about the crime he committed at 19, but about the homophobia behind it.
“I noticed that there was that element of LGBTQ bias in the slur that I used,” he said. “In that slur, I was actually dehumanizing a human being.”
When the country debated marriage rights for LGBTQ people, he said found himself frustrated.
“I actually took offense at people who were against gay marriage,” he said.
So in 2015, when ACT started forming, Melendez took his own life experiences and used them to help design a curriculum for other straight peers in the class. Two years ago, Melendez was released. He is now a national advocate for restorative justice and LGBTQ rights.
Among those who benefit four years later from his work inside are attendees like Lee Xiong, who was struggling to face his younger brother who he suspected was gay. Trying to grapple with that, Xiong found ACT last year.
“I always thought that transgender or gay were nothing,” he says. “I thought it was a choice.”
Lee Xiong, center, participating in San Quentin’s restorative justice group.Kate Sosin
Xiong has spent more than a year unpacking those feelings. When his brother came to visit him at San Quentin, Xiong asked his brother to come out to him. It took him five minutes to even reach the question.
“I was so ashamed,” he tells the group. “I asked him that question. Is he going to get hurt? Or is he in fear to tell me? But he just came out and said, ‘Yes man, I know what you’re going to ask me.’”
His brother told him that when he came out to their parents, they told him to “get the f–k out” and disowned him.
“I told him that, “You know what, don’t worry man, when I get out, we’ll talk to my mom,’” Xiong said.
This story, of straight prisoners connecting with LGBTQ family because of their time in ACT, is highly common. Bankston’s sister came out to him as transgender.
“I cut off communication,” Bankston said. “I don’t want to talk to you more. I don’t know what to say to you. Nobody likes you.”
But Bankston recently picked up the phone and called his sister. He asked how she was.
“He, excuse me, she ran with the whole rest of the conversation,” Bankston said, correcting himself on his sister’s new pronoun.
“It’s going to take some time and to adjust to my sister’s new lifestyle,” he explained. “I got some struggles with that. I’m not perfect.”
In May, Bankston’s sister agreed to come visit him at San Quentin for the first time since he entered prison 17 years ago.
The planned visit was a moment for the group to reflect on how far Bankston had come, according to Mizell. When he entered ACT, he was looking for a “chrono,” or a positive write-up to help his parole case. “And now I am out here being an ally, raising awareness and answering questions,” he said.
‘I was able to be authentically me’
Straight prisoners aren’t untangling their homophobia and earning parole at the expense of LGBTQ inmates in the group. For those who are LGBTQ, the group can be deeply healing.
“There was a time I would be deathly afraid of someone like Nephew,” 52-year-old Adams, tears pushing at his eyes, said of Bankston.
“This group is the first time I was able to talk about my lived experiences, as related to being a member of the LGBTQ community,” Adams said. “It was the first time I was able to be authentically me and also feel safe. That’s a profound feeling of humanity.”
Adams, who has been incarcerated for 19 years, struggled for years before coming out as bisexual publicly on San Quentin’s podcast, Ear Hustle, last June.
He noted that not a single man in ACT identifies as gay. “In here, it’s life or death,” he said of coming out.
The group aims to ease some of those challenges by adding to the number of allies on the inside.
In order to build this empathy, Meza tries to draws parallels between straight inmates and their LGBTQ peers.
Juan Meza uses “The Genderbread Person” as a learning tool during a session of San Quentin’s Acting With Compassion and Truth group.Kate Sosin
He shows the class “The Genderbread Person,” a visual tool for talking about gender identity that resembles a Gingerbread man. He draws kind of a stick figure on the whiteboard. The group labels the person by distinguishing where different LGBTQ identities live: Anatomy is on your body; gender and sexual orientation are in your heart and brain.
“My culture would say that I’m a ‘two spirit,’ because I have the spirit of the masculine and the feminine at the same time,” Meza explained. “So it just really has to do with how I express myself and how I know myself.”
The group is then asked to rattle off words used to hurt marginalized groups: racist terms, sexist words, anti-LGBTQ slurs and hurtful terms for the incarcerated. Adams and Meza drew lines between the groups of terms, noting that insults hurled against prisoners, like “punk,” are also used to hurt LGBTQ people.
Nythell Collins is an inmate at San Quentin. Kate Sosin
Meza noted that using the wrong pronouns for a transgender person can be just as harmful as a slur.
“We’ve said it many times, when we can’t express ourselves for who we are … a lot of the community ends up killing themselves,” Meza warned.
Class in April goes well over the allotted two-hour time. Egypt Senoj Jones, 25, a transgender, sings a song she composed herself, called “I Know.” She stands in the center of the arranged tables, her arms outstretched, tilts her head up toward the low ceiling vents and closes her eyes.
“I know what I gotta do,” she sang. “Now that I know the truth, there is no excuse.”
She sang about growing up in foster care, transitioning to female, dropping out of college and popping pills. She is snapping her fingers. By the end, the whole group is singing the chorus with her. She finishes and they erupt into applause.
Outside in the yard, Strawn poses for the camera in the sinking sunlight. Strawn beams in a movie-like pose, sunglasses glinting against the glare.
“This is how we do it at San Quentin,” Strawn said playfully.
As property prices and rents continue to skyrocket in San Francisco, the need is a greater than ever to preserve the heritage of the city’s threatened queer spaces. One response has been the creation of six cultural districts, each defined by the City as “a geographic area or location within San Francisco that embodies a unique cultural heritage.” Achieving this designation qualifies the area for resources to sustain and promote its cultural assets. Two LGBTQ-related cultural districts have already been established: Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in the Tenderloin and the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District in SoMa. An internationally recognized center of LGBTQ culture since the 1970s, the Castro will soon join them. After more than two years of effort, legislation creating the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District was introduced to the Board of Supervisors on April 9. Sponsored by District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the legislation was proposed and developed by a working group convened by the GLBT Historical Society that includes neighborhood organizations, businesses, residents and supporters. Historical Society Executive Director Terry Beswick responded to our questions about the project.
Why is the GLBT Historical Society invested in the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District? The GLBT Historical Society has always had a strong interest in place-based history and has worked to document and preserve queer cultural assets. The cultural district initiative focuses on preserving the living culture of a specific population, and that includes more than buildings. It includes people and everything that makes it possible to live, work and play in the neighborhoods they have claimed as their community’s home. The cultural districts program looks at how we can support affordable housing; cultural centers and events; human services; jobs for groups under greatest threat of displacement; and in general, anything the community decides is important to sustain and improve the queer culture of the Castro.
What process is involved in getting the district established? We called a community meeting of diverse neighborhood leaders, business owners, nonprofits and residents at the beginning of 2017 on the back patio of the Castro Country Club. At that time, many had never heard of cultural districts and did not know about the districts as a proposed source of hotel tax funding. We took a straw poll, and everyone was in favor of forming a Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. The process for establishing cultural districts in the city has changed since the first one was created, and that led to quite a number of open community meetings where we discussed our priorities and the boundaries of the district. I personally facilitated a lot of the process and just tried to keep the train moving.
How can the designation of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District help maintain the area’s visibility outside of San Francisco, including internationally? Well, I’m not sure that’s the goal so much. The concern is that as we work to support and encourage the external trappings of queer culture that make it more attractive to tourists, new residents and businesses, property values and rents will continue to climb. Often, that means fewer people of color, fewer trans and young queer people. My hope is the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District planning process will be set up in an inclusive way that brings together all the stakeholders and that we will be intentional about what we want to achieve. People have been involved in this project for a variety of reasons, but I think we all agree there is value in maintaining an inclusive place for all LGBTQ people to feel completely safe and free. If that continues to attract people from around the world, then that’s beautiful, too. For more information about the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, click here. To follow the Facebook page, click here. Nick Large is an LGBTQ, API and Japanese American activist with a particular interest in LGBTQ movements and place-based organizing in San Francisco. He serves on the GLBT Historical Society Board of Directors.
