The San Francisco Trans March is San Francisco’s largest transgender Pride event and one of the largest trans events in the entire world. It’s always the Friday of Pride weekend and thousands of people attend.
The first March was organized after an anonymous email was sent around to several community activists. The almost original wording of the email was:
We are calling for this march to demonstrate that we are a significant and growing portion of the lgbtiq community; to increase our visibility and presence in the tgiqlb community and the overall community at large; to encourage more trans and gender-variant people to come out; to build connections among ftm, mtf, bayot, crossdressers, sadhin, hijra, transvestites, bantut, drag queens, drag kings, mahu, transsexuals, bakla, travesti, genderqueers, kathoey, two spirit, intersex and those with other labels for themselves and no labels for themselves, those who see gender as having more than two options, and those who live between the existing options; to support one another as a community, through all of our struggles; to speak out against violence, hate, transphobia, and the oppression of any and all of us under the existing social structure; and to be fabulous and powerful in the company of others that are fabulous and powerful.
Dress up, show up, bring signs, speak out, and be what happens!
Please enhance, translate and pass this on to any groups, lists, or individuals who might be interested.
Several activists answered the call and organized the first Trans March on June 25, 2004 with a gathering in Dolores Park followed by a march to Civic Center. A few hundred people attended the first march, twice as many the next year and it’s been growing ever since.
See Cecilia Chung’s recollections of the first TM here: https://www.facebook.com/cecilia.chung/posts/10151428885851039.
SF Trans March is organized and run primarily by volunteers from the community. Support for our Trans Rights has increased. With that increased support, Trans March now has the honor of paying some of our community to do the hard work of putting on the event. A small volunteer Planning Committee heads up everyone’s efforts and makes sure that everything we do supports our mission and vision. But the event itself is the result of the hard work of many, many people doing things big and small.
It gets better and better every year, so come be a part of our history!