Several large corporations who've abandoned diversity efforts in recent months have not come on as sponsors for the 2025 San Francisco Pride celebration. Among them are Amazon, Google, Apple and Target.
Chris Robert, the deputy executive director of the organization that puts on the annual parade and festival, revealed the list of missing companies that have previously signed on as sponsors of the yearly LGBTQ event to the Bay Area Reporter ahead of the 100-minute virtual March 12 membership meeting of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration Committee.
It comes after Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford already told the B.A.R. that Meta – another mega corporation that has abandoned efforts on DEI, short for diversity, equity and inclusion – wasn't expected this year. Meta had also not participated in 2024.
Robert hasn't responded to a follow-up question on if the corporations are expected to come on as sponsors before the event held on over the last weekend of June, the dates of which this year are June 28-29.
Robert did say that Ford and board president Joshua Smith "will both address folks this evening about where SF Pride is in the planning and fundraising process, but also reflections on our mission and core values. I think what they have to share will speak to the spirit of this concern, but we are bringing many community producers and volunteers together to talk about their 2025 plans and that will be the primary focus of the meeting."
Smith didn't directly address the matter during his remarks during the beginning of the meeting. He did say, "We are centered in a culture of belonging, of bridging, not a culture of breaking or othering people. Our door at SF Pride is always open to a conversation throughout our stakeholder communities."
Ford didn't speak to the issue of corporate sponsorships either, but did say that the committee's decisions "can't encapsulate everybody's opinion" about whether Pride is living up to its core values.
"My job is to ... make sure this platform is going to be here," Ford said. "I think it's an enormous responsibility to make sure it's here for its 60th [anniversary], it's here for the 75th, no matter who's the president, no matter what's going on in this country. This has to exist."
Ford said that the platform of pride has to exist even for people who use it to say they aren't going to come.
"They can use the SF Pride platform to say they're not coming, and when they do that, we take our hats off to them and say, 'You're family, you're free to do that,'" Ford said.
Ford also clarified that "not all contingents [in the parade] are sponsors," giving Visa as an example of a group that marches in the parade but isn't a corporate sponsor. There is a fee, though, that most parade contingents have to pay, with this year's cost for businesses that have gross revenue under $10 million set at $1,121 and those over $10 million needing to pay $11,855.
"Only a few sponsors are in the top third in the parade," Ford said. "We have weighted it so corporations are mostly in second third or back third."
Ford had said on KGO-TV earlier this month that the "resistance" part of this year's motto, "Queer Joy is Resistance," "will include letting go of some companies no longer aligned with SF Pride's values."
As the B.A.R. previously reported, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club published a letter to its Instagram page last month urging the Pride committee to cut ties with companies that have jettisoned DEI policies and programs. The committee, which puts on the annual parade on Market Street and two-day festival in the Civic Center Plaza, has long received sponsorships from major companies.
"These companies' presence in the parade would be an affront to the activists, community members, and allies who rely on SF Pride to be a space of integrity and resistance against injustice," the Milk club stated.
Ford hasn't returned multiple requests from the B.A.R. for comment regarding Apple, Amazon and Target, and the Milk club's statement.
The B.A.R. asked the Milk club's co-presidents Reid Coggins and Melissa Hernandez before the March 12 meeting if they'd be interested in attending it to share their views. Coggins stated to the B.A.R. that they could not because their own club was meeting concurrently.
"We feel that the letter we sent to the Pride board sufficiently shared the membership's views," Coggins stated.
They did not answer a follow up text message if the Milk club would consider not participating in the parade if Pride doesn't ban the corporations in question, and who'd make that decision.
As of February 7, a screenshot of Pride's partners tab on its website showed Amazon and Target as sponsors. However, as of March 12, no partners are listed for 2025's parade, though sponsorship and partnership opportunities are https://sfpride.org/partners/.
Trump win fed anti-DEI tidal wave
What started as a backlash against DEI efforts at major corporations instituted during and after 2020's reckoning on racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer became an evisceration after Republican President Donald Trump's election last year. Since returning to office in mid-January for his second term, Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at companies contracting with the federal government that target DEI programs and reverse civil rights-era equal employment rules.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg terminated the company's DEI programs in January, attended President Donald Trump's inauguration, and donated $1 million to his inaugural fund. The company shortly thereafter agreed January 29 to pay $25 million as part of a legal settlement with Trump after the company shut down his accounts in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
Around the same time Meta changed disinformation and hate speech rules for its platforms. As part of the policy changes at Meta, it clarified in its community standards that, "We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"
The Milk club's letter stated Pride should go further than not having Meta in the parade.
"While the SF Pride has told press that it does not expect Facebook to participate in the parade this year, we believe the Board should actively ban Facebook and companies engaged in similarly harmful actions – like previous SF Pride sponsors Google, Amazon, and Target, who have publicly announced they are ending DEI initiatives – from participating as a matter of policy," the club's post continued. "These companies' increasing alignment with right-wing political figures, sometimes including outspoken support of Donald Trump and his regressive, anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, is deeply troubling."
Google's parent company Alphabet edited out references to DEI in its report to the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year and ended diversity hiring targets, MSNBC reported. Google CEO Sundar Pichai also attended the Trump inaugural, which had limited attendance, as it was held inside the Capitol.
Amazon also removed references to "inclusion and diversity" from its SEC report, CNBC reported. The online retailer's former CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the owner of the Washington Post. Last year he spiked the paper's editorial board's planned endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, breaking with an almost half-century old tradition of presidential endorsements. Bezos was also a guest at the Trump inaugural. He recently changed the paper's op-ed policies to only adhere to two topics, personal liberties and free markets.
After Minneapolis-based Target Corporation announced the end of some DEI policies January 24, Twin Cities Pride ditched the retailer, the Advocate reported. Target had been a major corporate sponsor of Twin Cities Pride and the company had pledged $50,000, but the Pride organization quickly raised over $89,000 after the split, the LGBTQ publication reported.
The B.A.R. reported last year that Target had removed Pride displays from the front of many stores and even shifted some items to its website for online purchase only, leaving designers and artists feeling angry and betrayed.
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