What Banko Brown's Queer, Trans Community Says They Need for Safety, Joy in SF

Celebration and sorrow often intermix.

It’s with that in mind that Friday, the San Francisco Trans March is commemorating 20 years of trans beauty and resilience. At 6 p.m., marchers will make their way from Dolores Park, down Market Street, to Turk and Taylor streets — the Tenderloin site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot, when trans San Franciscans pushed back against police discrimination.

But the celebration also comes just two months after the death of Banko Brown, a Black transgender man who was shot and killed by Walgreens security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony in late April, after allegedly shoplifting.

While locally the investigation into Brown’s killing has been dropped by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Brown’s death arrives at a time of unprecedented legal attacks on trans lives throughout the country.

The ACLU is tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the U.S. Those laws target many facets of trans people’s lives, from playing sports to using bathrooms, weakening nondiscrimination laws and banning medically necessary health care.

The situation isn’t much better close to home. In San Francisco, transgender people are 18 times more likely to be unhoused than cisgender folks, according to Our Trans Home SF. One out of two trans people have been unhoused, and 70% of them report being harassed when staying in homeless shelters.

Brown had a similar experience, spending years struggling to find stable housing and at times being unhoused, including in the days leading up to his death.

It’s in this time of turmoil, hate and hope that KQED reached out to trans people in Brown’s life who were part of his community at the Young Women’s Freedom Center, where Brown sought support and, eventually, became a staff community organizer: Xavier Davenport, 36, a Black transmasculine man who was Brown’s mentor; Kazani Kalani Finao, 33, a Samoan transmasculine man who took the role of community sibling; and Juju Pikes-Prince, 24, a Black transgender woman who was a trans auntie to other trans people at the center, including Brown. Davenport and Kalani Finao were born and raised in San Francisco. Pikes-Prince was born in Daly City and raised in San Francisco.

This wide-ranging conversation aimed to find the commonalities in their experiences and Brown’s, navigating homelessness in San Francisco, acceptance in their families, and how trans people can find joy, despite the obstacles that lie in their path.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: We have some weighty topics to talk about today, but people aren’t just defined by trauma. Tell me a bit about how you met Banko Brown and your fond memories of him.

Kalani Finao: I met Banko through Young Women’s Freedom Center. We like to call it their “center sibling.” So he’s a center sibling of mine.

But on a personal note, we just had amazing, great conversations personally. Just always sparring with each other, bouncing back with fun ideas. He was a bright, outgoing person. Like conversation was always immaculate, always amazing, and he was a visionary. The struggle not only brought us together, but like I was able to like really build a relationship with him based on his gifts.

Davenport: He became my mentee [at Young Women’s Freedom Center]. That was during the pandemic. We were focused on a lot of projects that were going to empower trans masculinity, empower the trans masculine identities that were coming up in [the] community.

And so, I wanted to make sure we had a group during the pandemic, like a peer-to-peer support group. The pandemic was very hard for a lot of transmasculine folks. A lot of them were essential workers. A lot of them lost jobs. A lot of them were creators that lost jobs. Some of them were sex workers that lost jobs. So my focus was to empower those people and make sure that they were heard and make sure that they could have someone to talk to. And so, Banko would come to those groups.

He enjoyed being able to be around other transmasculine people, focusing on how we can do something different for each other.

You said he felt like a visionary. Do you remember the first time you were sitting across, talking to Banko, and thought, “This person is just so amazing.”

Kalani Finao: When he was advocating on behalf of himself, nobody would tell him what is best for him. He was always very, very stern, but very confident in what he was telling me about anything, whether it was advocating on behalf of himself or on behalf of others.

He was very creative with his swag, his drip. He was a trendsetter to me. He’s definitely inspirational to me. I always would share with him, you give me so much confidence. You give me so much courage for me to be me.

What I remember of him is drip, sauce, smile, hugs, goofiness. He funny. He hella funny.

He [also] pushed me to always have hard conversations, being honest for me.

Banko Brown reportedly was unhoused at the time he was killed. He had slept on BART at times and stayed with friends. Is this a familiar experience, both seeing it with Banko and in your own lives and trans communities? 

Kalani Finao: So I have been homeless a lot in my life. I grew up here [in San Francisco] — you know, my first moments of living life on Earth, my family was experiencing homelessness. And then, when we did kind of get on our feet, and I’m speaking more of like my family, my mother, my grandmother, my great-great-grandmother. You know, those were the people that raised me. We floated in and out of housing, homelessness a lot.

It’s disgusting to live in the shelters. You always end up with some type of bedbug outbreak, MRSA outbreak. You got people fighting. When you put trans people in the shelter process, people talk bad about you. They treat you messed up, but they also use you for their sexual perversions. And that’s all trans people. And then, when you include a transmasculine person into the entire bit, they’re really mistreated. Right. Because then you have people that want to fight you because you think you’re a man. And so, they want to show you that you’re not a man. And so, you have to now deal [with] and navigate that experience as well.

And so I said, the hell with that. I started just staying with people.

Pikes-Prince: When I first had met Banko, he was housed at some point. Then later on down the line when we lost another trans sister in the community, that’s when stuff started to come out like, oh, he’s looking for housing. He has nowhere to go. So he was struggling at some point around that time. And there’s only so much a person can do for an individual, you know, and you’re also struggling, too.

Navigating homelessness in San Francisco is hard. It’s hard and it’s expensive, no matter what. Being homeless is still expensive. I was homeless for about two years. I was living with a dude and it just wasn’t working out. But then even shelters, shelters don’t protect you. Shelters don’t protect my people either. Our stuff gets stolen. There’s fights that break out. People look at us like we’re nasty.

We’re mostly impacted [because] we’re probably on drugs, sex-working to find shelter, can’t get jobs because of who we are. It’s hard out here. I’m a sex worker, so I know, I know what it’s like.

You all touched on discrimination in the homelessness process, to some extent. But I wonder if you could talk about discrimination in a different context — the day Banko Brown was killed by a security guard in Walgreens, in late April. Some folks in the trans community said they sensed discrimination at play. Some people pushed back, pointing out that the security guard was also Black. I was hoping you could expand on what you suspect that discrimination could have been, from your own experiences.

Davenport: When you are a young Black, transmasculine-identified person, people see that. He walks in, he’s dark-skinned. He has a hat on, a T-shirt. And he looks very masculine. He has a little bit of a goatee growing in. People see that. And as another Black man, or being another man, there is a fight for power. There is a fight for or struggle for who is the man in this situation.

And the thought process is, “You look like a little boy, or you’re trying to pretend to be a little boy.” Because let’s be clear. Banko had not had top surgery. He had not been going through that part of medical transitioning. He wasn’t stable enough in his housing to even get through that part of this process and the things that he wanted to do. So you have a masculine person with visible breasts coming at you. You are going to now struggle for your manhood.

It’s something that for people that are even lesbians who are more masculine looking, there is a struggle between men and any form of masculinity that, to them, isn’t necessarily real. Because, “You’re a woman. You can’t possibly be as masculine as me.”

I know this. I’ve dealt with this my entire life. I deal with it from police officers. I deal with it from people in my community. I deal with that from people on the streets. I deal with that at all aspects of my life. Somebody always wants to show me who is the man.

You have a person with the gun who’s struggling for masculine power, then you put a powerful piece in his hand. You end up with this situation with Banko and many other situations around the country with transmasculine folks being killed. His is not the first. Unfortunately, it will not be the last. But this is the state of our country and what we live in right now.

Pikes-Prince: And these are cases that are not getting covered, of Black trans men getting killed. We need to come together and start putting it out there so we all can be seen.

We’ve seen a wave of conversations in public about Banko Brown’s identity since he was killed. And his death comes amid a national wave of anti-trans laws, as conservative lawmakers increasingly target the transgender community. So I’d like to talk about acceptance. Let’s start close to home. Were you accepted by your family when you came out? What was that like? 

Davenport: Me and my mother understand what’s happening. Because my mother birthed me. But my father and my siblings that my father has, my father’s children, they have a bit of a hard time. And so, we don’t necessarily talk the way that people would think family should or relatives should. But my mother respects who I am. My mother understands what has taken place. And she’s accepted that.

Pikes-Prince: My family, they understand, they’re very understanding. At first, it was tough, they just didn’t get it, the lifestyle. But when I told my mom everything and broke it down — you don’t want a dead child, right?

My father, on the other hand, he’s more big on education. He told me, he don’t care what I do. He wants me to graduate. I got it easy, in a way, but I still had it hard and I still struggle. Identity came into play. I’m just trying to come into myself, too.

You know [with] my mom, I was blunt, I do sex work, and I do this and that.

And she was understanding?

Pikes-Prince: I mean, she had to. I’m her child. I think really, partially, where she kind of understood after so long of me having to remind her because it took a time. So just a street life, how the street economy is, and not to put her business out there, but how she had to navigate homelessness herself and how she had to go about business to support about four children at the time or three. She understood: “As long as you’re safe, I love you.” We’ve got a good relationship.

I just want to say this, too, because there was narratives being painted [publicly about Banko’s relationship with his family]. Banko do have family, that do care and love. But there was, at some point, everyone went their own ways. So I do just want to say that on the record he did have family, that did care and love. But he was looking for space in people’s hearts to fill that void that he has been missing.

Kalani Finao: My mother told me straight up, “Be you, son. Be you, son.” And for me, that’s a f—— privilege. Like, you know, for someone who’s being who they are, like me, and for my mom to just show up right away, how she was able to just accept me for me. It was just like a restart of our relationship as a mother and son today.

She’s just a gift to me, you know? And so, what I’ve been doing with my folks is just like sharing my mama with them. Her strength is everything. She’s also someone as a queer being. Coming from a Samoan family and being someone growing up in the ’80s, being this queer, young Samoan girl who also is like exploring identity. And then, also exploring sexuality. She didn’t give a s—. She was like, I am gonna do me.

When you say you share your mama, do you mean you share her with other trans people who don’t have that?

Kalani Finao: Everybody. Trans people, all people. People who struggle. Like, my mom just signs up like, “I love you, I’ll f— with you.” And so, I shared my mama with my folks. And it’s all love. It’s my duty to make sure to create spaces for folks to be themselves. I just have to.

We’ve talked a lot about weighty things. Hardships. But the goal is joy, right? I want you to tell me what your joy looks like.

Pikes-Prince: I would say living and finding purpose, picking up someone else’s purpose when they couldn’t find their purpose. And knowing that I’m here and I can share some type of story for someone. Getting it out there, and hopefully helping the next person, the next generation, to continue to do this advocacy work.

Kalani Finao: I’m hella passionate about young folks. We say kids are the future. We got to really mean that s—.

Davenport: My joy looks like the rest of the work that I do, working with transmasculine-identified people. I do that even in my leisure time. The Bay Area Trans Masculine Collective is doing a second premiere of a calendar that we started last year with a group of transmasculine folks to continue to ensure that transmasculine folks are seen and can receive joy in seeing and having representation of themselves in all bodies, and different cultures and ethnicities.