San Francisco 'Beacon of Love' Pride Parade Shines Bright, Other March Calls for Boycott

San Francisco’s 54th annual pride parade on Sunday kicked off with music blaring from speakers and cheers as thousands of spectators, members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies celebrated one of the largest pride parades in the world. The event included over 200 parade groups and exhibitors, as well as community-run stages and venues.

“It’s like a thousand psychic rainbows barfed all over San Francisco [and] it is the best thing you could ever want to do,” said Rachel Levine, who marched with Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in the parade. “Wherever you are in the world, you can come here, and you’ll have family when you get here.”

The parade began Sunday at 10:30 a.m. at Market and Beale streets, traveling down Market until 8th Street and ending with a party in front of City Hall. Hundreds of colorful floats filled the street along with thousands of people marching, representing the wide variety of LGBTQ+ experiences.

Jesse Ryder Salveson, with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, drove a decorated vehicle in the parade and shared why the celebration was so important.

“[SF Pride] means the celebration of life and loving and being in love with yourself and the world and the people around you that you love to be with,” Salveson said. “I was born in this city, and it’s just such an honor to be able to drive my art car up Market Street in pride.”

For Dr. Gina M. Fromer, president and CEO for the GLIDE Foundation, a charity organization that helps unhoused people in the city, this year’s parade was the first time she’d been able to attend in person and participate.

“I feel beyond happy right now,” Fromer said. “There’s color, flair, beauty, love, [and] transparency [with] just amazing camaraderie among people in San Francisco. I’m excited to ride for Pride.”

The parade came as Attorney General Rob Bonta released the 2023 statewide Hate Crime Report on Friday. The report showed hate crimes in California based on sexual orientation rose by over 4% in 2023, marking three years of consecutive increases.

“While it is heartening to see an overall decrease in hate crimes in 2023, some of our communities, including our LGBTQ+, Jewish and Muslim communities, continue to be targeted and endangered by hate at alarming rates. An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us — there is no place for hate in California,” Attorney General Bonta said.

The report also shows anti-trans hate crimes have risen by over 10% and incidents involving anti-LGBTQ bias have risen by more than 80% since last year.

“Unfortunately, bad people think that it’s okay to go and perform a crime against LGBTQ+ people and put their lives at risk,” said Jorge Reyes Salinas, communications director for Equality California, which claims to be the largest statewide LBBTQ+ civil rights organization. Reyes Salinas said hate crimes in California rose alongside anti-LGBTQ rhetoric across the country and encouraged people to report them.

The city’s Pride Parade is the capstone of celebrations throughout the region taking place this weekend. This year, a number of changes were made to smaller, community-organized events that also mark LGBTQ+ celebrations in the area.

As KQED’s Natalia V Navarro reported earlier in the week, there wasn’t an official Dyke March this Pride weekend.

Organizers of the Dyke March said their organizing committee has dwindled due to a combination of factors, including inter-community conflicts around racism and trans-inclusion, the deaths of several leaders, and burnout. The remaining members of the group resigned earlier this month.

“Marginalized groups [and] communities don’t always have the time and resources available to get through difficult times, such as reviving after a global pandemic,” said M. Rocket, one of the committee members, in an emailed statement. “Many of us are working class, holding down multiple jobs to stay afloat in one of the most expensive cities in the country.”

Organizers said they planned to use Saturday — the day the march would normally take place — to recruit community members and plan ahead for Pride 2025.

“It’s going to take a lot of community healing,” Rocket said. “There’s been so much unrest over the years and then so much disconnection during the pandemic.”

This year’s celebrations also saw a separate Pride protest march. As KQED’s Nisa Khan reported earlier this month, amid the ongoing siege in Gaza, several pro-Palestinian queer activists and artists are calling for a boycott of official San Francisco Pride events by both performers and attendees.

In a now-removed Instagram post, African Palestinian drag artist Mama Ganuush called for a boycott of the parade on several grounds: corporate sponsors with ties to Israel, the potential for a pro-Israel presence at the parade, the long-controversial attendance of police at the Pride Parade, and the appointment of an actor who made several public statements in support of Israel — as the 2024 Pride Parade’s grand marshal. The call for a boycott also pointed out criticism of some of SF Pride’s corporate sponsors.

Despite the joyous atmosphere of the city’s Pride Parade, down the street from the celebrations, the mood was more somber at the “No Pride in Genocide: Queer and Trans March for Palestinian Liberation” protest. Several hundred people waved both pride flags and Palestinian flags while others carried signs with watermelons and poppies on them that said “no pride in genocide.” The Brass Liberation Orchestra, the Balkan Contingent and other groups provided music.

Jesse Ehrensaft-Hawley, a volunteer with the communications team for the Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area, attended the protest march and said they believe that the safety and freedom of LGBTQ Jewish people is directly related to the freedom of Palestinians, both locally as well as abroad.

“Our identities as queers and as Jews will not be weaponized to support a genocide that is being directly funded by this country and politicians, corporations and community organizations based in the Bay Area have a responsibility to say ‘no,'” they said.

Carla Schick, one of the organizers of the protest with Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), a Bay Area group that supports Palestinian liberation, said the true message behind Pride isn’t just about rights for the LGBTQ+ community but making systemic changes.

“The original queer liberation [movement] was not about assimilation, it was about changing the structures in the society,” they said. “Having rights is different than liberation, and we want to see all people be liberated. And the only way to do that is to challenge the very structures that created that oppression.”

Schick said that they aren’t telling people not to celebrate Pride or acknowledge attacks on the LGBTQ+ community in the U.S. Rather, they want to make sure that those attacks are challenged alongside the country’s militarism and all the money that supports those efforts. They see a ceasefire as the ‘bare minimum’ and would like negotiations to take place for Palestine to be its own country.

In 2021, Amazon signed a billion-dollar contract alongside Google Cloud to provide technology (including artificial intelligence) to the Israeli government and military. Current and former employees at both companies staged protests this year against Silicon Valley’s deep ties to Israel.

For years, queer communities have grappled with the increased corporatization of Pride as companies sponsor events and employees march in the parade.

In a June 4 statement, SF Pride said: “‍SF Pride’s sponsors, corporate and otherwise, have no influence over the content of our programming or the stance of the organization. The high cost of infrastructure and other safety measures at such a large-scale public and free event is currently possible only with financial commitments from corporate and government funders.”