Rebecca Prozan is a fighter, and a lover, too. She fights for what she loves: her community. This year, her community is celebrating her for that.
The San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee selected Prozan to be a community grand marshal for this year's Pride Parade and she couldn't be more honored to participate as a local LGBT leader.
"Millions of people have come to a Pride parade event �" gay people from all over the world," she said. "To know that I'm one of maybe 100 people that's been a grand marshal is a pretty incredible feeling."
Prozan, an out lesbian, has 17 years of community organizing and advocacy experience and a resume so long you wouldn't believe she's only 40 years old.
She is currently the director of community outreach at the San Francisco District Attorney's office where she is facilitating a new community relations model to provide specific communities with renewed self-determination. The new approach involves creating different steering committees for women, LGBT people, Asian and Pacific Islanders, African Americans and Latinos, identifying problem areas within those communities, and devising solutions.
"We're hoping to do some work around immigration with the Latino community," Prozan said, "making sure that people understand that when they report crime there are no immigration consequences to that. The African American steering committee really focused on mentoring and job training. It's a very new way to look at things."
District Attorney George Gascón agrees there's no better person to charge with fostering community partnerships.
"Anyone that knows Rebecca can attest to her get-it-done work ethic and her commitment to public service and the community," Gasc�"n said in a comment to the Bay Area Reporter .
Prozan's concern for people was fostered by her Jewish parents while growing up in Hillsborough on the Peninsula. Talking politics was commonplace and her father's favorite question to ask at the dinner table was, "What happened in the world today?"
An event that never left Prozan was the Iran hostage crisis that lasted 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981.
"One of my closest childhood friends was Persian," she said, "and I just remember how difficult it was for her at that time, living in a very white, straight, Christian society. It really taught me a lot about how people treat each other, without being judgmental and how that can really have an impact."
While Prozan remembers getting along with everyone in school, she recalls feeling like an outsider herself. She never fit the Hillsborough prototype: a "Heather" or a "Mean Girl," and while she claimed to have crushes on boys, she knew she was different.
"Our rabbi had us write a letter to ourselves when we were 16 and they sent it to us 10 years later," Prozan said. "I actually wrote that I was gay, that I was homosexual. It might have been the first time I ever wrote out that word."
Entering politics
Prozan came out her second year at UC Santa Cruz while completing a degree in politics. Her first step into the mainstream political sphere came in 1995, after moving to San Francisco. She landed a job as a field organizer for Willie Brown's successful mayoral campaign. That was also the moment, she argues, that she stepped into LGBT politics.
"I think being an openly lesbian field organizer automatically qualifies," she said, laughing.
After two years working in the mayor's office as a special assistant, Prozan took over as LGBT liaison where, for the next two years, she secured funding for LGBT nonprofits and community programs and increased LGBT governmental representation. She also organized the first same-sex domestic partner ceremonies.
"There was a time when you just got the paper, you never got the ceremony," she said. "Organizing the first ceremonies was my project. We had about 10 couples and did a group ceremony to kick-off that we could have this done now. It became the [TV news] clip used for the next five to seven years in the 1990s. It was awesome."
Prozan left the mayor's office in 2000 to earn a law degree from Golden Gate University. In late 2003, she jumped back into politics when Kamala Harris asked her to manage her bid to become San Francisco's first female and first African American district attorney.
"She was polling at 8 percent," Prozan remembers. "I told her there's no way she could win. She said that if I could get her in the runoff, she could do it. I had to move some things around, raise some money ..."
And less than 60 days later, Harris was San Francisco's new district attorney. Today, she is the attorney general of California, having won a tough statewide race in 2010. Harris remains grateful and thinks Prozan's selection as a grand marshal is a well-deserved honor.
"Rebecca has stood as a leader of the LGBT community in San Francisco for over two decades," Harris said in a comment to the B.A.R . "She stands up for what's right, protects our civil rights, and continues to fight for equality."
In 2004, Prozan joined the D.A.'s office where she eventually spearheaded the Neighborhood Prosecutor and Community Court Program intended to alleviate the city's impacted judicial system by directing low-level crimes to community courts.
An avid supporter of President Barack Obama, Prozan was elected as a 2008 Obama delegate. She tried her own luck running for office as District 8 Supervisor in 2010 and, despite a loss, can't wait to run for office again.
"I loved it," she said. "I love to meet people and talk politics. To be able to mesh the two together on a daily basis and get people to understand why you're the best candidate is an extremely rewarding experience."
This year, she earned her second Obama delegate selection and plans to represent him accordingly during the SF Pride Parade this Sunday.
"If all goes well, the Obama contingent will be marching right behind me," she said. "I really want to highlight his election as one of the critical things to get done this year. Now that he's come out for gay marriage, people don't have an excuse anymore."
Prozan knows the value of same-sex marriage well. She and her wife, Julia Adams, have been married three times. They became domestic partners in 2003, got married during the 2004 "Winter of Love" (which was later overturned) and again in 2008 at their house in the Castro during the period when same-sex marriage was legal in California.
"It's the issue of the generation," Prozan said. "A domestic partnership is a civil contract and it also feels like one. Marriage is a lifelong commitment, a totally different ball game."
Prozan also serves on the Castro Country Club advisory board and is the recipient of many leadership awards from organizations like the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club and the Roosevelt Institute.
Believe it or not, Prozan makes time for herself. On days when she's not making a difference in the community, she's wine tasting with her wife in Napa, riding her new touring bike around the city, or walking the couple's rescue dog, Mika.