Pride weekend in San Francisco is officially underway, with the 21st annual Trans March kicking things off on Friday afternoon. This year’s slogan was “Living History, Building Futures,” with the overriding theme for many participants one of liberation for all amid the relentless attacks against trans rights and other pro-equality measures being waged by the Trump administration.
With the crowd size estimated to be as high as 20,000 participants, this year’s march is believed to have drawn a record crowd. LGBTQ+ individuals and allies had first gathered in Mission Dolores Park for a rally then marched to the Tenderloin neighborhood and its historic Transgender District.
Participants of various ages and locales joined in, including Paci Hammond, who commuted from Berkeley to attend the march for the first time. She was one of the many people not transgender themselves who showed up this year to support the trans community.
“I understood the Trans March as being for trans folks, and so not being trans, I thought I should respect that. But then this year, I read, ‘Come one, come all. Show your support.’ And that's why I’m here, and it sure is fun,” said Hammond, 70.
Hammond, who is straight, brought a handcrafted sign to the march. One side of it read, “I love my non-binary child. They are a wonder.” On the other side was “Transgender rights are human rights. Support and defend them.”
“We have to be present. We have to fight back and make our voices heard. … We have to work toward making more people understand that transphobia and homophobia work against us as a society,” she said.
Trans March 2025 comes at a time of open attacks on minority groups in the United States. For the trans and gender-nonconforming community, those attacks have been in the form of not only anti-trans legislation but also decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last week, the conservative majority on the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for youth.
Meanwhile, Republican President Donald Trump has signed executive orders since taking back the White House in January to ban trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports in federally-funded schools; reinstated the ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military; and declared that the federal government will recognize only two biological sexes, male and female.
All of this set a certain tone for this year’s Trans March and fortified its purpose, noted organizers of the event.
“Trans March is not a parade, but an act of resistance. [It’s] an opportunity for us to draw the connections between the struggles of oppressed people beyond the imperial core,” read a Trans March Instagram post that preceded the event.
Vendors situated in the park on Friday sold black t-shirts with the slogan “Dump Trump” on the front and “Times up. Impeach Trump” on the backside. Attendees carried signs bearing messages such as “Queer as in end capitalism” and held banners with sentiments like, “Fight the billionaires, not trans youth!”
The gigantic trans pride flag, a fixture of the Trans March, was unfurled again this year, with volunteers holding onto its sides. Many people held or wore trans pride flags of their own.
Chants, audible throughout the march, included, “Black lives, they matter here; trans lives, they matter here; queer lives, they matter here;” “From Stonewall to Palestine, resistance is justified. No justice, no peace. No ICE or police;” and “Immigrants are welcome here. Say it loud and say it clear. Trans people are welcome here.”
One chant referenced legendary trans activists Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Leslie Feinberg, urging a remembrance of “our ancestors” and a call for “revolution.” Johnson and Rivera were both drag performers who took part in the Stonewall riots of 1969, while Feinberg was also a butch lesbian and award-winning author.
Prior to the march’s 6 p.m. start, married couple and Transvisible artist-duo Breath Mormorer and Dakota Rose Austin stood near the Dolores Park Liberty Bell with a large trans pride-colored lobster sculpture — one of their art pieces. They planned to wheel it between them as they marched.
“We do visibility and protest on a regular basis,” said Mormorer, 55, who with their spouse took part in demonstrations earlier this year against anti-trans policies several saunas in the city had instituted.
She wore a yellow dress with a purple circle on it — a visual symbol of her identity as intersex.
“Standing proud, fighting for our own kind. Being seen, being visible — that’s what we’re about,” said Mormorer, who is also trans.
Austin, who lives in San Francisco with Mormorer, noted the good turnout at the march and the sense of community the city offers. She stressed the importance of taking Trump’s targeting of LGBTQ+ individuals seriously.
“I love the San Francisco parties, don’t get me wrong. But with a government that's anti-us, it's not always time for a party,” said Austin, 47, who is trans.
She and Mormorer have been attending the Trans March for the past couple of years.
“We just want to play our part,” said Austin. “We were having this conversation last night about when it's all said and done, we just want to put our fingerprints on the city and our community. I think everybody should want to [do that] in some type of capacity.”
Friday’s march featured several groups, including a Palestine contingent, who were there protesting the war on Iran, the genocide of Palestine, the war on immigrants, and attacks on trans people, and an immigrant rights contingent, protesting attacks on LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities. Specific groups in attendance included the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the HIV Advocacy Network, and the Latino Task Force.
Also at the march was ComptonsxCoalition (CxC), who held a banner that read, “Liberate Comptons.” The contingent was organized by the TurkxTaylor Initiative, the group behind efforts to remove the for-profit Geo Group Inc. from 111 Taylor Street, where the company operates a halfway house for people recently released from prison. The building is the former location of Gene Compton’s Cafeteria and the site of the queer uprising that occurred at the all-night eatery in August 1966 (exact date is lost to history).
Known as Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, it stemmed from a specific occurrence — a trans woman in the diner resisted arrest by a police officer, throwing a cup of coffee on him — but was also fueled by repeated incidents of police harassment and discrimination toward trans and queer people in the Tenderloin neighborhood. It preceded the better known Stonewall Uprising, which occurred in response to the police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
The San Francisco Board of Appeals recently allowed LGBTQ advocates and historians to move forward with their attempt to “liberate” the site of the residential reentry facility via protesting its zoning approvals. The activists want to return ownership of the transgender historic site to the trans community, as the Bay Area Reporter reported, and the appeals board is expected to take up the matter July 16.
In January, the Compton’s Cafeteria building at 101 Taylor St. became a federal landmark, now appearing on the National Register of Historic Places and on the California Register of Historical Resources (listed as 101-102 Taylor St.), as initially reported by the B.A.R. Friday night it served as the culmination of the Trans March, with participants honoring the site of a significant moment in trans history that the community is drawing inspiration from in the present day.
