Olaywa Austin, center, founder of Oakland Black Pride, accepted the Pride Freedom Award from interim Executive Director Suzanne Ford, right, and Nguyen Pham, president of SF Pride's board of directors, at the second annual Ken Jones Awards reception and fundraiser held October 20 at Cityscape Bar and Lounge in the Hilton hotel in Union Square. The awards, which honor LGBTQ+ advocates, are named after Jones, a Black man who died in 2021 and who was key to the desegregation of LGBTQ activism and the first Black person to chair the SF Pride board in the early 1980s. Other honorees were gay men San Francisco Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax and Paul Henderson, executive director of the Department of Police Accountability, who each received the 10 Years of Service Award; Bill Hirsh, a gay man who's executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, who received the Pride Community Award; Pau Crego, a trans and nonbinary person who's executive director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives, who received the Gilbert Baker Pride Founder's Award; drag artist D'Arcy Drollinger, who received the Audrey Joseph LGBTQ Entertainment Award; Greg Cassin, an HIV-positive gay man who received the José Julio Sarria History Maker Award; and Guerilla Pump, a queer DJ, who received the Pride Creativity Award.
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