LGBT protesters connected to the #BlackLivesMatter movement have riled up tensions within their own group after some of them targeted the Castro's largely white bar scene last year, with the hope of recruiting all LGBT people to join their cause.
The effort backfired. Twice in the past several months, those same protesters claim they were assaulted by patrons or employees at Toad Hall, a gay bar that took over the site formerly occupied by the Pendulum, which had once catered to black gay men.
Perhaps this will help soften the relations: This month, the #BlackLivesMatter movement got a strong endorsement from one of the LGBT community's most mainstream organizations, the SF Pride Celebration, when Alicia Garza, a longtime Bay Area organizer and one of the founders of #BlackLivesMatter, was elected as the community grand marshal for 2015. Garza just so happens to be a queer black woman.
"Every year, issues change, and I think that the community and the membership look at the most pressing issues in the community," says Gary Virginia, the president of Pride's board of directors. "There was recently a rally in the Castro from the LGBT community about Black Trans Lives Matter, and I think SF Pride can be credited with always being focused on our mission about diversity and rights."
"We are always monitoring the pulse of the movement and we fulfill our mission through our honorees," he adds.
Garza says she sees this as a chance to challenge the white LGBT community. "The LGBT movement has a long way to go in terms of dealing with questions of race," she says. "And while I am incredibly honored to be chosen as a grand marshal, what I would hope is that this isn't a move that is 'celebrating diversity' but in fact is a move that is calling for 'mainstream' LGBT movements to pay much more attention to this question of race and even class."
Another important issue for Garza is what she calls the "deliberate perpetuation" of "this notion that black folks are more homophobic than anyone else"— a stereotype that she says erases the work black people have done to fight for LGBT rights. "We still have a long way to go in terms of the white LGBT movement really understanding and supporting the centrality of black folks as part of the movement."
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