Faces from the Trans March, in San Francisco on Friday evening, June 23, 2023, including Bruce Beaudette (and Yoko O-Yes), upper left; Christina “Ms Ladybug” Gilmore, upper right; and newly married couple Gracie and Crystal. (Christopher Partin/Special to SFGATE)
Faces from the Trans March, in San Francisco on Friday evening, June 23, 2023, including Bruce Beaudette (and Yoko O-Yes), upper left; Christina “Ms Ladybug” Gilmore, upper right; and newly married couple Gracie and Crystal. (Christopher Partin/Special to SFGATE)

Though the mood of the event was largely joyous, that sense of urgency and protest was never lost. 

“When we say that we’re marching for trans liberation, we know that means we have to be fighting for Black liberation, right? It means we have to be fighting for justice for Indigenous people, right?” trans march organizer Rosa Astra called out to the crowd from the event’s “stage,” a motorized cable car trolley parked where the march ended at Turk and Taylor streets. 

After a chorus of cheers, Astra continued: “It means we have to be connecting every single one of these struggles.” 

Not only was the political climate of the entire country addressed at the march, but so were recent events that have transpired in San Francisco. Protestors up and down Market Street called attention to the death of Banko Brown, a Black transgender man who was shot and killed by a Walgreens security guard in May. 

The march ended at the historic Tenderloin street corner where the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot took place in 1966, later lauded as the country’s first documented instance of queer resistance against police violence. That air of resistance and community hung thick over march-goers on Friday. 

“This, to me, means family, it means community, it means joy,” said a marcher named Secoya. “It means centering joy and not ignoring everything that’s been going on in the last year, but reminding ourselves that our existence is more than all that.”