Promoting Solidarity and Trans Power in San Francisco
Breonna McCree, a leader of the world’s first Transgender District, describes painful setbacks and the path to defeating bigotry.
Photo credit: Breonna McCree
by Pax Ahimsa Gethen
Pride is not a mere party. It’s a bigger celebration of LGBTQ resistance and resilience in the face of hostility and discrimination. After a flood of anti-trans and anti-DEI decrees from the Trump administration leading up to this Pride Month, June has seen the withdrawal of corporate support for Pride events, the Supreme Court’s anti-trans youth ruling in US v. Skrmetti, and the shuttering of an LGBTQ youth suicide hotline.
Despite these setbacks, our community persists.
In San Francisco, one of the leaders in this resistance is Breonna McCree, co-executive director of the world’s first legally recognized Transgender District. When Assigned Media last spoke with McCree earlier this year, she talked about the services the District offers, including self-defense classes and name- and gender-change clinics. We checked in with McCree to see how she and her colleagues are faring in the face of escalating attacks.
“During this current administration, we’ve witnessed a sharp decline in funding, the rollback of DEI initiatives, and a troubling rise in transphobia, panic and fear,” McCree said. Diminished funding this year “has had a real impact on our ability to scale our programming and provide direct support to community members.”
Still, McCree said, she has worked closely with local leaders to “strengthen community safety and resilience.” In addition to rolling out self-defense classes, she has consulted with the Lavender Rights Project and the Transgender Law Center on legal issues, and strategized with grant-makers at the Funding Forward Conference.
McCree also contributed to a conference that preceded the biennial National Transgender Health Summit, held in San Francisco on May 30. “We focused on building a national trans agenda, collecting stories, and sharing the strategies communities are using to defend gender-affirming care and trans rights in a time of growing political hostility.”
Yet the funding losses experienced by the District and other trans groups have had a direct, real-world impact. The District had raised $50,000 to support summit attendance for Black and Brown trans folks from the South, for example, but funding disruptions forced it to reallocate the money to basic operations like meeting payroll.
McCree noted a markedly lower attendance at the summit this year. “In my opinion,” she said, “the absence of the vibrancy of Black and Brown trans community-led initiatives in the space left it feeling clinical and disconnected from the grassroots energy that gives these gatherings life.”
In common with the three co-founders of the Trans District, including previous executive director Aria Sa’id (who spoke with Assigned Media earlier this year), McCree is a Black trans woman. I asked her thoughts on the risks and rewards of visibility for trans folks.
“Black trans women have always been visible, from Lucy Hicks Anderson to Mary Jones to Marsha P. Johnson,” McCree said. “We have put our bodies, souls, and spirits on the frontlines of trans liberation. Time and again, we’ve carried this movement, risked everything for it.”
“And yet,” she continued, “when the movement gains momentum, we are often the ones left behind. Left to pick up the pieces of a community that continues to be disappointed and discarded. Still, we rebuild. We create. We rise again.
“But at what cost? Liberation—for whom?”
McCree worries about the loss and abandonment of Black and Brown voices in the trans rights movement, and what it can result in. “It is a version of us—flattened, polished, detached—shouting ‘protect Black and Brown trans women,’ while we quietly exit the movement, burned out, broken, or gone. Gone because of stress, violence and death. In the name of liberation.”
Despite the challenges, McCree said that the District remains “deeply committed to celebrating and protecting trans joy!” Current and upcoming activities include a weekly drag show supporting trans-led organizations, and a “Brunch with the Dolls” party to watch the San Francisco Pride Parade.
McCree urged allies to support the trans community not simply during Pride Month, but year-round. “Support us when no one’s watching. Solidarity means putting something on the line, too,” she said. “Show up by supporting trans-led and trans-centered organizations, volunteer your time at our programs and events, stand on the frontlines with us to show your support for our work in a meaningful and intentional way.”
“When we fight for trans liberation, we build a better world for us all,” she said. “Trans survival is not enough; we are building toward trans thriving and trans power.”
Pax Ahimsa Gethen (they/them) is a queer agender writer, editor, and curator. They live in San Francisco with their spouse Ziggy.