About 50 people gathered outside San Francisco City Hall on Monday morning, calling on city officials to drop felony charges against people arrested during the Trans March last month.
Community members demanded that prosecutors dismiss the cases and urged the city to rethink its approach to policing the annual march.
Renee Coe, a lawyer and police liaison for the march, said she witnessed a police squad car drive into the crowd and saw officers hit people and shove them to the ground.
" I called out to the person that they were arresting to ask for contact information for someone, but before they could respond, an officer had shoved me with his billy club and pinned me against a concrete wall," Coe said.
Those arrested are facing felony charges related to alleged vandalism. According to the police department, officers monitoring the Trans March on June 26 at about 7 p.m. saw two people spray-painting property near Market and Eighth streets.
Organizers argue the charges are excessive and say the police response was disproportionate.
"The way that those arrests took place was unusual," said Coe. "For vandalism, a lot of times it's just a simple citation that's handed to someone. There's no need to go into a crowd with dozens of riot cops and attack an entire crowd."
The SFPD did not respond to KALW's request for comment before publication.
Community members said the confrontation with police echoed a long history of tensions between law enforcement and San Francisco's transgender community.
Organizers noted that the clash happened by Turk and Taylor streets — the site of the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot. That uprising began after a transgender woman resisted arrest by throwing a cup of coffee at a police officer. Drag queens and transgender women then took to the streets, fighting back against police in what became one of the first known LGBTQ+ uprisings in U.S. history — three years before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City.
Since then, decades of community organizing have helped secure services for transgender and queer residents in San Francisco, including HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives, housing programs and other forms of institutional support.
However, Renee Coe said she believes the arrests last month reflect a broader trend of increasing attacks on the rights of transgender people across the country. She said she worries these incidents could reverse decades of progress and signal a return to a period of heightened fear and discrimination for this community.
For Trans March organizer Mar Omega Williams, the arrests reflect what she described as a disproportionate use of force intended to make an example of the transgender community.
Williams said trans people have long been singled out because widespread misconceptions and political narratives make them an easy target.
"So it's really important for our community to show up for each other," she said.
In addition to calling for the charges to be dropped, organizers asked the city to replace the SFPD's role at future Trans Marches with civilian traffic management through the SFMTA, working alongside the march's trained volunteer safety team.
Speakers also urged the city to invest in what they described as long-term public safety solutions, including healthcare, housing and employment opportunities for transgender people free from discrimination.
The rally concluded after organizers emerged from a meeting inside City Hall. One of them, Rosa Astra, spoke to the crowd. She said the mayor's office received the group's demands, but no agreement was reached.
Astra said incidents like this lead to LGBTQ+ people feeling unprotected. "We really can't rely on the police or public institutions to keep us safe," said Astra. "We need to be organized as a community in order to achieve those things."
Astra said the group would continue meeting to support those arrested and she urged people who wanted to get involved to stay connected.
